#tessa bailey

[whatcha-reading-today]

Wound Tight | Tessa Bailey

This is a gay PWP, and a perfectly serviceable one at that. The fact that this is part of a series where New Jersey is the featured location is frankly hysterical, and I greatly enjoyed some of the jabs at Boston. Did expect more diners and references to pork roll (maybe in the other books??).

I'm on the fence about recommending the audiobook. Teddy Hamilton does a great job narrating both characters, but the Boston accent sort of appears and disappears depending on whether the author mentions it explicitly. This sometimes makes it difficult to tell who's talking but otherwise it's a good time.

Format: Audiobook

Read in: April 2024

[johnnyricks]

Ding ding ding!

Fangirl Down absolutely shocked me with how good it was. Turns out a silly romance novel about golf can have good characters, funny dialogues, a plot that makes sense and downright filthy smut. Inspiring. Tessa Bailey truly wrote a masterpiece of golf romance genre.

Enthusiastic 4/5

[missabigailtaylor]

Current April reads even though no one asked 😬

[thatzwackman]

secretly yours by tessa bailey makes my heart smile

[nalit-source]

Fangirl Down (Big Shots Series) by Tessa Bailey

"I had no idea what unconditional love looked like until you, Josephine. You taught me how to be like this, and I will love you whether or not you're helping me win some fucking game. We are bigger than a game."

[fated-mates]

You can’t throw a stone in romance without hitting a FAKE DATING story, so we dedicated an episode to it in season 4. We talked about when it works, why it works, how it works, and by whom it works, so get your library cards ready because this one will topple your TBR! While this one is, as always, for the readers, there’s lots of goal/motivation/conflict here for the writers, too.

[77-bouncing-muffins]

“It Happened One Summer” review:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Suuuuuuuch a slow read for the first half which is why it’s only 4 stars but the second half? Oh. My. God. So good. So hot. Obsessed with it and obsessed with the two of them!! Would read again but only the second half cause I have the background now. Def reading the second book in the series asap.

[stratosvere]

Sunset lit the car in a deep orange, and she felt that rich color spread inside her chest, too, where her heart battled to keep up with the love that bloomed freely and wildly, a lot like the spring storm creating warm, white noise around the car.

[teenageread]

Review: It Happened One Summer

Synopsis:

Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar... in Washington.

Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face. Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.

Plot:

Piper Bellinger was a socialite of LA. Her job was to sleep all day so that she could party all night. Her step-father, Daniel Q. Bellinger has been in her life since she was four, and her little sister Hannah was two. Before that, her mom lived in this little seaside town and left after Piper’s father died, found Daniel, and is happy being a millionaire's wife. When Piper’s longest boyfriend ever, dumped her after three weeks of love, claiming Piper’s an airhead, Piper decides to get him back by tossing a pool party. This pool party landed her in jail, and almost cost Daniel a financial supporter. Wanting to teach his step-daughter a lesson, Daniel ships Piper, and through volunteering Hannah, off to Westport, the city of their father. Giving them the upstairs apartment of a bar they apparently own, Piper had to make her own way in town with no financial support and no rescue until Halloween. Sticking out like a sore thumb, Piper and Hannah were the new girls and caught the eyes of all the locals. One of them was sea captain, Brendan Taggart who told Piper she was not made for this town. Determined to survive and stick it to all those who doubt her, Piper begins to find herself and makes a place for herself in Westport, and within Brendan, a surprisingly soft heart. 

Thoughts: 

Tessa Bailey wrote this book so that they can write an explicit sex scene. A true classic summer read, nothing about this novel is remarkable, except for the four explicit sex scenes that Bailey writes Brendan and Piper in. Our characters are pretty two-dimensional, Piper is an LA wild child who has to learn responsibility while still being her fun-loving sparkly self, and Brendan is a cold, stoic sea captain, who learns to bend their strict routines to accommodate their loved one. Classic lesson learned so our characters are not completely the same, but nothing to write home about. For our side characters, Bailey made Hannah Piper’s sister, rather than her friend, but only kept them at friend surface level conversation. Our sisters are literally in the town of their dead dad who they know nothing about, yet they would rather talk about Brendan’s bed performance than talk about their dead dad? Same with Opal, a family member our girls meet, but Bailey never has them have an emotionally charged heart-to-heart, which could have led readers to tears. Yet the only tears I was shedding were from laughing at the awful smut writing. Seriously, Brenard has never called Piper a nickname, but as soon as her pants are off the “honey” and “baby” start to come out. Horrific, and insulting, Bailey really went off four times when our characters hooked up, only to bring them back to their minor problems with minor solutions. Overall, if you want a cute summer small coast town book, others are way better to read. However, if you want some smut, there are also other books to read. This book is trash with no real substance and mediocre sex, and it's a forgettable novel.

Read more reviews: Goodreads

Buy the book: Amazon

[fandomcen]

[artsandcraps]

A Tessa Bailey offshoot series with a very specific fetish: Line of Doody

[llstarcasterll]

Endpage art I made for Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey!

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[myloveforhergoeson]

ash's february 2024 reading round up

find all the books and fics i read (or didn't) this month under the cut with a link to the synopsis and my reviews/ratings attached :)

this is just for fun! i'm not a professional, i just like to read <3

book list!

Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey (18+)

• review: as per my last post, i'm a huge tessa bailey fan but i would be lying if i said i picked up this book to read because i was interested in the story. i only picked it up because the second novel in this pair is about a hockey player - i am just a simple girl with simple taste. that being said, i wasn't expecting a book centered around golf to actually be fun and even a little sexy... what happens when a once on top of the world golf superstar falls from grace and scares off his last remaining fan girl? a hurricane apparently... that wipes out her family's golf proshop... and she doesn't have the money to fix it. so, in order to save face and try and keep around the one person in the world who still believes in him, Wells hires Josephine to caddy for him on his next professional tour. admittedly, i didn't like Wells at all until the last 20 pages and the epilogue. he was rude, selfish, and downright mean to everyone - including josephine. while that's not a trait i care for, i respect that it's certainly one the fmc loves. i really loved josephine; she was such a well rounded character. her struggles reflected what its like to be young and running a business - having to choose whether to pay medical bills or insurance for the store, constantly having to make sacrifices for the things you care about. then, caddying for wells, an inspiration for women in male dominated fields! i learned a lot about golf, passion, and aspiraition, as well as how two people can be so different but so right for each other regardless. wells certainly loves joesphine, and i do too! his control issues were off putting however. and i also loved that josephine didn't have to give up her dream of running the proshop to be with wells! epilogue made me cry and i cannot wait for the hockey companion novel...

• rating: 4/5 times i learned playing golf makes you a shit ton of money

and... that's it for this month. didn't finish any fics unfortunately but i'm in the middle of a few good ones! i'm currently reading masters of death by olivie blake and do your worst by rosie danan so be on the look out for those in (hopefully) next months list :)

[dargeereads]

Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey

 5 stars

audiobook

Grumpy Sunshine done right! These two, wow, the difference in them from the start of their story until the end, amazing. How they grow, for the better, not because of the other, but because of how they see things. The chemistry, and heat, wow, they sizzle when together, it’s a wonder they don’t electrocute everyone around them. Loads of fun and banter, fast-paced, and some truly tender moments, loved every second 😊

[triviareads]

Is Tessa Bailey a good contemporary romance author?

I like her older stuff better, and yes, I can personally say that includes some of her cop romances although I understand why people are more reluctant to read that stuff now. She was very good at writing obsessed heroes without it getting too cartoony or turning it into a made-for-booktok moment that feels mildly disingenuous. I've talked a lot about Sink or Swim on here and that's for good reason— it's actually really great to read about a contemporary hero that's OBSESSIVELY in love with the heroine from a young age, his sexual obsession and his fantasies all being centered around her to the point where he's celibate for years before she gets with him. And Jiya is such a stellar heroine— she's practical but she's also a dreamer and reading an Indian-American heroine was super gratifying since Tessa actually did good with the rep. And the stakes are actually decently high in this book, like, the hero is covering up something criminal (well, it was justified) and it's come back to haunt him now.

One of her newer books I did like, which I also reviewed, was Unfortunately Yours— and a large part was because it reminded me of her older books (especially Asking for Trouble) with romcom appropriate enemies-to-lovers with loads of humor and bickering and banter.