Book Review: Pit Stop
G.N. Wright’s novel Pit Stop not only left me disappointed, it made me feel as though I wasted my time. What follows is my longest review published here on the NostalgiaDepartment, and it’s not because I loved the book.
Official Summary
Premier Racing International is the best racing league in the entire world, and it just so happens to be my rookie season.
I’ve got the skill, the drive, and a famous last name that carries a lot of weight where it matters. So it should be easy right?
Wrong.
My one night stand has just been hired to spend the next four months following me around and handling all of my PR.
Prescott Reed Lamont IV is everything I hate in a person. Posh, preppy, and hiding who he truly wants to be, behind his old money and his father’s last name.
I know he’s the last thing I need right now, especially when he’s still in the closet, and I’ve got skeletons in mine.
So why can’t I leave him alone?
Starting a fling with him should have only been a pit stop on my way to the top, but now I’m in too deep with only one goal in mind.
To make him mine.
Quick Information
Author: G.N. Wright
Published: July 17, 2026
Genre: M/M Romance, Contemporary Romance, Dark Romance
Tropes: Enemies to Lovers, Threesomes, 3rd Act Breakup
Review
Racing bad boy Wilder Miles is having his debut season so his father hires a PR manager named Prescott Reed Lamont IV to clean up his son’s image. After having a one night stand the two have to spend the racing season together and amidst their animosity lots of repetitive sex happens.
I immediately knew I was going to have a bad time when I read the following authors notes:
“Besides we all know we’re not really here to read about the racing.”
Actually Wright, I was. The main reason I was interested in this title was to read a MM romance with a Formula 1 setting as I had never read anything featuring this before. I would have passed over this book completely if that aspect hadn’t caught my eye. When I read a book marketed for sports romance, I expect to see the sport represented. The Formula 1 aspect of this entire book is glossed over so quickly and summarized in the briefest way possible. The author explains a pole position in racing and then what place the main character comes in following a race. We never see details of MC1s training, how he experiences the track, any of the adrenaline you would expect from a sports novel. Nothing of substance happens regarding this part of the story. In fact either MCs could have worked in fast food and it wouldn’t have had an impact on the overall narrative.
When an author is advertising a genre or setting, those are the things we the readers expect to see on the page. I read sports romance to see athletes fall in love amidst the stressful pressures brought on by their intense careers. I recently read Connection from Chicago by Wendy Hawthorne which actually shows what athletes go through: the pressure, the stress, the frustration, the media bombardment, the disappointment after failure, the joy of success. Hawthorne managed to do all of that and not lose sight of the overall romance of her characters. I read No Man’s Land by Sally Malcolm which captured the historical setting of World War I with such care that I may not be able to read another historical romance without thinking of her book. The importance of the historical setting and the impact of the World War I time period was interwoven into the overall plot and romance without seeming like an afterthought. These are only two recent examples, but I could go on and on with other books which landed their setting and atmosphere in ways that were meaningful.
I am getting so tired of authors saying they are writing a sports romance for it to simply be a box they check without really caring for the theming. For Wright to start off the book saying no one cares about the sports side of a sports romance, is like saying no one cares about the historical setting in a historical romance. It's like saying no one cares about the doctors in a hospital, in a medical romance. These themes and settings are why we pick up certain books. It's beyond insulting for an author to just casually disregard readers in such a way.
I wanted to stop reading immediately after such a terrible take, but this was an author I had not read before and an ARC. I felt bad at the idea of DNFing a book due to an author’s note, so I continued on.
However, the prologue fared no better when all of the sudden we’re introduced to a murder that happened off screen. These main characters are still in college and living in the dorms. The way this whole scene is handled is actually comical. I laughed at first thinking it was a joke, but then the author tried to spin it seriously with the blood soaked shirt that somehow the character walked onto campus with, through a dorm building, all the way to a roof top to have a conversation. Somehow, no one saw him in this state. This left me wondering if I was somehow reading the wrong book. I wasn’t.
Never before have I come across an entirely dislikeable cast of characters. Rich, entitled, party going nepo babies who have no redeemable qualities. Wilder, the racer whose one expression is to grind his jaw through the entire novel, is set up to be this violent bad boy. He's insulting and just an overall asshole, but everyone loves him for some reason. The author tries to say he's facing pressure from his father and the weight of the Miles legacy, but it's only ever explored superficially. In fact, this entire plot point is mostly glossed over by 40% of the book as if the author forgot about it or realized you can’t just have an asshole character be an asshole for the entire book and had to “redeem” him in some way.
Reed fairs somewhat better, as we do see him working PR to spin Wilder’s image on occasion, but I still was left wanting. The backstories of these characters are so superficial and glossed over that it feels tacked on rather than natural. I think there is plenty of opportunity for sexual tension between an athlete and a PR person. You just won’t find it here.
This book truly has nothing of substance. The amount of repetition was tedious, and trying to slog through the same scenes in a slightly different setting was exhausting. How many times must we hear about all the side characters' sexual conquests? How they are always fucking hot women, sticking their tongues down a girls throat, or sandwiching a woman between two mens’ bodies? Almost every single time a side character is on screen is the answer, and there are a lot of side characters. This seemed so forced and janky that I wondered whether or not the author was trying to remind everyone she predominantly writes MF. Removing these scenes could have easily cut down the book by at least 20 chapters. The pacing was off the entire way through.
As if there weren't already enough red flags, we have to deal with Wilder’s best friend Matteo, who we are reminded constantly that he is his fuckbuddy and that they fucked so much over the past few years. They joke about their past sexual activities in front of everyone, including Reed. We are also reminded about how much Wilder has also slept around constantly. After everything I had disliked about the book up to this point, there was suddenly a threesome that was never warned about which came at 29% which made me want to DNF this book all over again. I was repulsed by the entire way the scene was set up, and not being warned first from the book’s marketing that this was going to happen was frustrating. The author thought to warn people about the lack of sports in their sports romance, but she never labeled it as MMM. Be advised if you don’t want to hear and see other MCs conquests on screen or a sudden threesome.
The overall plot of the story was not engaging. With the lack of the athlete mindset for Wilder, we don’t see the pressure to perform or his struggles as a driver. Shortly after the threesome incident, the author introduces parental assault involving Reed which arguably serves as the only substantial plot point through the back half of the book. It should have been the Elite World Championships race that Wilder was in, but instead this big race is glossed over like the rest of that aspect of the story.
There is a recurring third act breakup which is left on repeat throughout the back half of the book until we get to the “longer breakup”. This longer breakup is hamfisted into the story because the plot needed something that wasn’t racing or PR related to drag it across the exaggerated finish line.
While Wilder and Reed started to be less annoying after the book’s half way point, and while there were a few tropes I like showcased within the 600 pages, these silver linings weren't enough to make any part of Pit Stop an enjoyable read. The plot points and tropes were executed in the worst possible ways with the most insufferable cast of characters to top off a bland story. Everything is resolved off screen with phone calls. The murder that was teased in the prologue finally gets a motive by the end of the book and that motive is hardly anything worthy subjecting yourself to.
The marketing for this book was manipulative. This book was not originally marketed as a Dark Romance until after I started reading it when the author changed the trope listing closer to its release date. The book’s cover and summary is also misleading. Unfortunately this book taught me an unintended lesson; I was not familiar with this author’s history of writing Dark Romance, but none of the marketing I saw which prompted me to check this book out would have led me to believe it would fall in this genre.
Despite the whiplash, I wanted to give this author a genuine chance from start to finish since they were new to me. I came in with a genuine curiosity about Formula 1 and hoped to see a romance flourish alongside it. I’m disappointed I wasted my time with this story. While the cute cover and premise sounded interesting enough to pull me in, I felt as though the author did a disservice by not stating clearly who this book is for. It’s not for me or any sports fan looking for a deep and meaningful story alongside a romance worth cheering for.
Don’t hit the breaks on your current TBR for Pit Stop. Keep on reading and leave it in the rearview mirror.
A copy of this book was provided for an ARC Reader Review. I am leaving this review voluntarily. Thank you to the author for giving me the opportunity to read this.
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