Tag: Tessa Bailey

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Wreck the Halls by Tessa Bailey ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romance

Beat and Melody are the children of two former rockstars who haven’t performed together in decades. When they are offered a million dollars to reunite their mothers on live tv, they each decide to take the plunge, agreeing to be live-streamed for the weeks leading up to the Christmas Eve reunion. Beat and Melody have only met once before, but their chemistry is immediate as soon as their livestream extravaganza begins.

Melody was your classic quirky, clumsy rom-com character who comes out of her shell as the livestream audience grows and falls in love with her. She was funny and entertaining and for the most part felt like a real person. Beat on the other hand was very one-dimensional and so much of his internal monologue was focused on his sexual preferences that I felt like I didn’t know him at all.

The premise of this book felt a little like a TikTok livestream meets Black Mirror episode, but I could totally see something like this happening and the public loving it. It was also interesting how the two of them had to navigate their lives with very little private time.

I would love to have known more about their mom’s banned, the Steel Birds. We meet the two mothers, Trina and Octavia, late in the book and they felt thrown in without completely being formed. The whole ending of the story in general was extremely rushed and unrealistic.

The romance was definitely there in this book and it did what it was trying to in terms of feeling very Hallmark movie-esque. Cute, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Wreck the Halls at an indie bookstore near you
Wreck the Halls on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance

Secretly Yours by Tessa Bailey ~ book Review

Morgan

Romance
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

I raced through this book in a few days, mostly because it was due back at the library, and it was a pretty classic, cute romance. Hallie’s childhood crush, Julian, returns to their hometown for the summer and Hallie wonders if she’ll finally get the chance to shoot her shot. When she’s hired to work on the gardens at his family’s vineyard, she feels like she just might have a chance. In classic grumpy sunshine fashion, Julian doesn’t even remember her.

There was a subplot about Hallie’s recently passed grandmother two feuding wine shops in town that had a lot of potential, but ultimately just felt super cheesy to me. I liked how it tied into her relationship with Julian but his rage about the situation wasn’t realistic.

If you’re in the mood for an easy, steamy romance, Secretly Yours will scratch that itch, but I don’t think I’ll remember the details of the plot in a few weeks.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Secretly Yours at an indie bookstore near you
Secretly Yours on Goodreads