I really enjoyed this! I’m not usually a fan of third person/past tense but such is the power of Emilee Carter’s storytelling, I stopped noticing it after a few pages. Brett’s demons were very real and handled beautifully sensitively. A gorgeous love story that kept me on the edge of my seat to the very last page.

I really struggled with this book, there were many times where I wanted to DNF. The biggest struggle was making it through the first chapter. There were far too many characters introduced within this chapter. I didn't know who was who and who was human or a pet. I struggle with third person books as it is and this made it even worse. At times it was dual POV with third person viewing and there wasn’t anything to show the POV had changed.

Not F1 like advertised, still motorsport. IEC, not sure what this is. I did give it a google but nothing came up to give me any answers. I didn’t have a clue what was happening, in terms of rules and race weekend schedules. There were mentions of le mans, and that it was 3 drivers so i'm guessing endurance racing. There was no actual racing in the story and I found the racing/track scenes very jumpy.

I did really like the women In motorsport representation.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- absolutely loved the characters and the story. Emilee has a great writing style and I absolutely love her sports romance.

I absolutely cannot say no to an F1 romance and this did not disappoint.

Although technically a standalone I do believe some of the characters mentioned were in bloodstream and definitely will be reading that soon to see what I missed and if I could have developed better connections with some of the side characters. But despite this I did absolutely love the side characters and their relationships with the MC throughout the F1 season tour.

Retrograde is a fun, lighthearted F1 romance with friends to lovers and MC who have amazing chemistry and banter.

Emilee’s writing style flows so well and allowed for an enjoyable and engaging read throughout.

The story line was engaging and I loved getting a ‘behind the scenes’ of an F1 tour.

Thank you to NetGalley, penguin random house and Emilee for this ARC 💚

Firstly, a huge thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review and opinion.

If there's something I've learnt from all my romance reading by now, it's that sports romances aren't always my go to. However, F1 romance novels are my favourite out of the trope, as its the one sport I actually understand what they are talking about after years of growing up around F1 mad big brothers.

This is essentially a standalone novel, however, it's set in the same world and characters as Bloodstream, Emilee's first book, so although I went into this blind, having not read Book 1, I think I would have got more out of it having got attached to some of the other characters from that book before diving into this book.

Yes, other people have commented on having quite a lot of characters thrown at you in the first chapters, but power through that and you will have yourself a fun, light-hearted, friends to lovers romance that will give you all the feels.

Brett and Lucie's dynamic in this was perfectly portrayed as the ultimate best friends that have that underlying attraction they both can't deny. It seems like everyone else around them is just waiting for the day they finally get together.

Brett faces a tough journey as he works through trying to battle an alcohol addiction, but Lucie is with him every step of the way. This book takes you from Sydney, to London, to Italy and I was just enjoying every minute of the ride 🏎️

The side characters pull you in as well. not just friends but their families too, so loveable that you find yourself wishing you were part of the gang.

We get to see the behind the scenes of the F1 world and I found it really interesting seeing what the day to day of a social media creator for the team would be like.

Loved this book, I flew through reading this and now going back to read Bloodstream!

Book 2. Thank you NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this book ahead of time in exchange for a review. It didn't disappoint! Must read!!

I enjoyed this book more than Bloodstream, however there were elements I didn't like.
Lucie was a great and loveable protagonist but the awful communication between her and her 'best friend' Brett wasn't great. However, the girls friendship was great, and I loved how they managed their own businesses.
I also missed the racing element of the story, which seemed to be forgotten in the sequel.
Overall, a decent read and I look forward to the third book.

This is book 2! It says you can read them as standalones, you can but you will spend the first 15% of the book confused who everyone is! I researched and everywhere said standalone so I read it and honestly regretted not reading bloodstream first, I’ve got massive spoilers now for a book I did want to read and not sure if i’ll go back to it now I know the ending.
However once I did get into it I really enjoyed it! Lucie and Brett’s relationship is beautiful I shed a few tears at the end! Can’t wait for bea’s story!!
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Release date - 7th November

i felt really underwhelmed with this, to be completely honest. everything seemed to move slowly and i was 70% through and nothing of meaning had happened. the third person dual POV was hard sometimes to understand what was going on and the massive onslaught of characters in the first chapter (13 either introduced or mentioned) was so overwhelming it took ages to figure out who was who. ther was also little to no racing, which is bizarre when you advertise your book as a motorsports romance. there’s hardly any actual motorsports in it, only mentions of who won the race but it’s a sentence or two. the chemistry between the characters was non-existent and i wasn’t invested enough with them to care about what happened.

overall, it wasn’t great. i feel like a few small changes could’ve made it a lot better and a lot more manageable as a reader to digest.

I didn't love this book. For me it took too long for the 2 main characters to get together and because they had such a friendship history it felt muddy and complicated! I'm sure this book would be for a lot of people!

ARC Review

This is the second book for the Revolution Racing team this time focusing on Brett and Lucie, this was a great follow on from the debut novel… I’d definitely recommend you read the first book before this if you haven’t as it follows on with Faith and Juliens relationship.

This is written in third person which took a bit of getting used to when first reading but once I got used to it I was invested in this story.
Really enjoyed the characters throughout and the way it touched on various topics!

Brett, all-star driver and 1/3 of Revolution Racing. Lucie, social media manager for the IEC and Revolution Racing, Brett best friend and has been since both step into the paddock aged 18. 10 years of friendship and tension comes to a head when Brett’s metal health takes a turn of the worst.
This book has both good characters and character development and to top it all off it is written amazingly. Sometimes to have one the other is sacrifice, but not when it comes to Emilee Carter. I typically find book which are written in third person hard to get into and I can't invest in the characters as well. However, I pick a book from Emilee, and she puts me under her little reading spell, and I can't put the book down. I don't know how she does it. But I will sing the praise of these book forever and ever and ever.
I loved book one and from reading that I was always deep-down invested in rooting from Lucie and Brett. The blatant flirting is unmatched and that doesn’t go away in book 2. Instead, it gets so much better. You get to see the deeper levels of their friendship, the true feeling towards the other, and the internal battles the face not just about each other but everything else in their lives. Brett is such a flirt I don’t know how Lucie has so much restraint, because trust me I would have had.
The whole Revolution Racing world is the definition of the found family trope and that is so true with the way they rally around Brett in his moment of need. And don’t just abandon him but instead cheer in on to get better and be the best version of Brett, Brett could be. But not only are they they’re for Brett they support Lucie in her efforts to support Brett. But when it gets tough, they hold her up and cheer her on in everything she is doing.

Sadly I found this unreadable. This book feels like it’s part of a series and the author is frantically trying to tell you about every possible character in the first few chapters, but it’s such a massive info dump that you ending up feeling like you’re swotting for a test, rather than enjoying a relaxing read. Books in a series only work if either you relegate some characters to background in the 2nd book, so you can focus on just a small number and introduce them gradually, or make it clear that the reader needs to have read the previous books in the series first so that they already know who is who and the author can then skip the info dump. As it stands I can’t recommend this book

I struggled with this one. I always love an F1 backdrop and following different characters in that world. However there was a lot of information dumping about different characters in the first few chapters which I struggled to keep up with. I also found Brett extremely unlikeable, which meant I wasn't invested in the will-they-won't-they tangle that him and Lucie were always in. This just wasn't quite for me.