Love From Scratch
Amy Hutton || Publication Date - 05.06.2024
Babysitting for an upcoming A-List Celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Fiction | Contemporary | Romance
Affiliate Link - https://bookshop.org/a/110173/9781761424854
'Love From Scratch' is a delightful rom-com that will take you away to the glistening beaches and film sets of my home country, Australia. Meet Ethan James, a charming movie star with a newfound love for dogs, and Hazel, a talented chef on a forced hiatus.
Their worlds collide when Ethan needs someone to care for his anxious dog, Harry, while his time is taken up shooting a film. After hosting interviews and his original choice for dog-sitter falls through, Hazel, reluctantly agrees to the job.
Exploring the nuance of following career dreams, or listening to your heart, you'll be sure to experience a series of humorous and heartwarming events.
Ethan and Hazel couldn't be further in career paths. He's a budding movie star and she's a down on her luck chef. While Ethan is preparing to film his next movie, a sequel to the hit romcom 'Sit, Stay, Love', he requests some professional pet minding assistance for his dog Harry. While interviewing potential candidates, he is introduced to Hazel, and from then on their lives become acquaintances to friends to head over heels for each other.
When going into this, I didn't realise this novel was a sequel, and even if I hadn't known, it reads perfectly as a stand alone. I loved Ethan's character, I loved Hazel's character and together I loved their banter. They sounded like a genuinely fun couple to write and it made me very happy to see Ethan find love after his supposed shafting for another man in the first instalment.
There were some issues towards the beginning of the book with how choppy I felt the writing to be. It didn't seem to flow very well and was quite robotic in tone. However, as the novel progressed, I noticed this less over time as more dialogue was introduced into the book. Amy has a great way with writing characters conversing and I found myself laughing with all of her characters witty comments.
I would also really like to personally thank Amy for giving her characters a pet name and NOT OVERUSING IT! It's a huge peeve of mine and the nicknames felt really sweet, deliberate and personal. As they should!
I did at times think the editing might have chopped off bits of the story haphazardly. We would be reading about one scene and immediately the following paragraph could be hours or even the next day later. It was quite jarring and took me out of the book. This book is split POV, but not per chapter, so both characters perspectives and described events are concurrent.
Overall Thoughts
'Love From Scratch' was an enjoyable read and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves a cosy and light-hearted romance. There are some plot devices which seemed to be disjointed due to the writing style of my copy - I am hoping this has been edited and amended in the final published copy of the novel.
I enjoyed the narrative and Amy's character writing so much that I have gone out and purchased her first novel in this series 'Sit, Stay, Love' to capture the beginning of this world and explore how Ethan ended up as he did at the beginning of this novel.