[Review] Lose You to Find Me - Erik J. Brown

Summary: Tommy Dees is in the weeds—restaurant speak for beyond overwhelmed. He’s been working as a server at Sunset Estates retirement community to get the experience he needs to attend one of the best culinary schools in the world. And to make his application shine, he also needs a letter of recommendation from his sadistic manager. But in exchange for the letter, Tommy has to meet three conditions—including training the new hire.

What he doesn’t expect is for the newbie to be an old crush: Gabe, with the dimples and kind heart, who Tommy fell for during summer camp at age ten and then never saw again. Unfortunately, Gabe doesn’t remember Tommy at all. The training proves distracting as old feelings resurface, and the universe seems to be conspiring against them.

With the application deadline looming and Gabe on his mind, Tommy is determined to keep it all together—but what if life isn’t meant to follow a recipe? (Pub Date: May 16 2023)

 

 This is a fun and cute story. I like Tommy and his conflicts, even if he is a little bit of a hard-head at times.

3.5 rounded up.

Tommy wants to go to the college where his late father started but couldn't finish his studies, so he is doing his best to get a recommendation letter from his stern manager at his part-time job. For this, she will give him some tests, being one of them to train the new hire at the retirement community where they work. However, this happens to be Gabe, Tommy's first crush of when he was still a pre-teen, who disappeared without notice and Tommy never found out what happened to him. 

It was a quick read with an interesting development. I wish I had been more able to cheer for the budding romance, but maybe that wasn't where the author's focus was or it was just lackluster. The ending was indeed cute and how I would have chosen it, though. It's just that I feel there was potential for more feels, you know?

As for the story, despite one major plot twist at about 30%, it goes as you would expect. I confess, I feared it wouldn't even do that, that it would be a let-down, but it wasn't. So I got a satisfying conclusion, but a not that satisfying path to there.

I loved the side characters, the friends from school, from work, the people from the retirement community, their stories were nice. As I said, I also liked the main character and his journey. It's heartwarming YA read.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.