Formula He's the One / Andie J. Christopher / Book Review
FORMULA HE'S THE ONE
Tessa loves a fast car. She always has. Raised in Indianapolis by her race car driver father, she's grown up with oil stains and kart racing in her blood. She's always dreamed of becoming the first full-time female driver for Formula 1.
But that all changed with the accident that took her mother. In the years since, Tessa's been on autopilot. No fast cars. No driver's license, even. She's at her father's mechanic shop more often than the racetrack these days.
When a family friend offers Tessa an internship for the Grand Prix at Monaco, she's inclined to turn it down. But her father won't hear anything of the sort. So Tessa's swept off into a glittering world of champagne, yachts, and racing royalty... including the boy who used to be her rival, back in the day.
But that all changed with the accident that took her mother. In the years since, Tessa's been on autopilot. No fast cars. No driver's license, even. She's at her father's mechanic shop more often than the racetrack these days.
When a family friend offers Tessa an internship for the Grand Prix at Monaco, she's inclined to turn it down. But her father won't hear anything of the sort. So Tessa's swept off into a glittering world of champagne, yachts, and racing royalty... including the boy who used to be her rival, back in the day.
THOUGHTS
Did I think this book was going to be great when I picked it out? No, not really. But it's been a while since I featured a sports romance here, and F1 is just so trendy right now. I wanted to see what it was all about, and I had hope that this could exceed my expectations. Unfortunately, this is the type of poorly constructed book that could only come out of publishers needing to fill a niche. And that need to rapidly fill a market need rarely results in a good read. Or even a fun one.
Did I think this book was going to be great when I picked it out? No, not really. But it's been a while since I featured a sports romance here, and F1 is just so trendy right now. I wanted to see what it was all about, and I had hope that this could exceed my expectations. Unfortunately, this is the type of poorly constructed book that could only come out of publishers needing to fill a niche. And that need to rapidly fill a market need rarely results in a good read. Or even a fun one.
PROS
| Glittery Nights | I might not have liked much about this particular book, but the aesthetics here, at least, are fun. It feels like a modern day fairy tale, a girl being whisked away on a private jet for a week of glitz and glam, flashing cameras and late-night yacht parties. It's escapism in its purest form, so at least this book has that going for it. |
| Sports Pros | Sports romance has taken over the adult publishing space, but it is relatively uncommon YA. So it's fun to find a sports romance hitting the shelves to cater to those younger readers who maybe don't want such explicit material on the page quite yet. And it's fun to have a bougie and buzzy sport being the focus, too. |
| Going Through Grief | I wasn't expecting grief to be as big a narrative here as it is. Tessa's really going through it, wrestling with her loss as well as what her mourning period has meant about the plans she used to have and the future she's facing. I don't think this book came together all that well, but I did like this piece of it. |
CONS
| This book wants to believe so badly that it is an enemies-to-lovers book or a rivals-to-lovers book, and it just isn't that. Tessa's too immediately enamored with her "rival" driver for all that. Don't get me wrong. "I hate him, but he's so hot" can be an interesting dynamic. But you need the hate to last in that situation. You need the attraction to be a major irritation for the MC. In this book, Tessa pretty quickly gives into the fact that she thinks he's hot. The hatred she feels toward him is stated, not shown. And there's absolutely no reason for it. So whatever the author thought was happening here? Yeah, it wasn't. Rivals-to-lovers fans out there, don't let the blurb on this one fool you. You will be disappointed. | Tropey Tryhard |
| I don't care how many times you say, "I want to be more than just a WAG!" If the only plotline you have is about being attracted to, making out with, and supposedly falling in love with a man, you aren't anything more than a WAG. Because you're a character, and you don't have anything else going on than what's on the page. Tessa is entirely consumed by her romance plot. The internship she got? Don't expect to spend any time there actually watching her help the pit crew. Don't expect to see her develop as a character independent of her man. She exists solely to fall in love with a race car driver, and just because she consistently mentions that she wants to be more than the girlfriend of a race car driver doesn't mean that she is. Tessa is nothing but her romance plot, and in the year 2026, we can do better than that. Give me some of her internship experience, at least! | Boy Crazy |
| Which kind of leads me to this point. Tessa doesn't grow as a character. She doesn't change. She literally exists only to serve a romance plot. There's a repeated narrative in this book of it being "too late" for her to get back to what she had before her mom died, which is the perfect set-up for Tessa to realize that nothing's too late at, what, eighteen years old? But that's not the story we get here. In fact, we end on the note of it being too late for her to be a professional race car driver. We end that way. We started that way, and we end that way. And that's crazy. There's just nothing like really instilling the idea in your readers that the hopes and dreams you give up on as a young teenager can't be achieved again after that. Because sure, we get Tessa behind the wheel of a car again (entirely off screen, so don't expect to see any character development playing out before a lousy epilogue). Maybe she does get a driver's license... but her dream of racing professionally is out the window. It's not coming back. So kids, if you give up on those dreams now, just know you can't ever reverse that decision. | Character Stagnation |
Rating
⭐⭐
2/10
Fans of the new-love-fresh-grief story told in Ashley Schumacher's The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway will like this new story of finding your feet after parental loss. Those who liked Jessica L. Cozzi's jet-setting romance We've Hit Turbulence will like this tropey new love story.
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Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own. |
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