Started: June 19th
Finished: June 25th
TSM Rating: 5/5
I cannot stress enough how much I love Tessa Bailey. Her books are so fun and funny and sexy. Her female leads are strong and self-assured and vulnerable. Her male leads are built for these women. They add a softness to them, even with their simplistic brute strength. Bailey perfected these characteristics with Natalie and August.
We first met these two in Secretly Yours, on the night Julian and Hailey get it on in August’s vineyard — good times. 😂 Natalie and August were hot and contentious from the moment they met each other. They are both strong-willed and quick-witted.
In Unfortunately Yours, the quick-witted banter is definitely still there. So is the sexual tension — which is really something Bailey excels at, which makes the pay off totally worth it.
What makes August so beautiful, aside from matching wits with Natalie, is the way he sees her. The way he loves her without fulling realizing he does. The man calls her a kaleidoscope!
He’s a kind, soft soul inside a big, muscly, ex-Navy SEAL exterior. He is masculinity at it’s peak, what with rescuing a family from a flood and flipping tires, but Natalie bring out his softness.
For her part Natalie, is in self-preservation mode at all times. Growing up in an emotionally bankrupt wealthy family, she learned to keep her feelings to herself, even though expressing and accepting love is something she wants desperately.
When these two enter into a marriage of convenience, it doesn’t take very long for them to break the “no sex” rule that Natalie puts on the table as they got very close to doing just that in a chair…on a crowded train.🥵 It also doesn’t take August very long to realize that he has deep, forever kind of feelings for Natalie. She eventually comes around too.
“…I worry about her. You know?” … “Sometimes she looks sad and I goad her into a fight just to get the kaleidoscope Turing in her eyes again. And when it comes back, it’s a lot easier to concentrate.”
August, page 129
What I love best about Bailey’s female characters is that even in their stubborn resistance to love, when they finally give in, its such a relief, like slipping into your favorite comfy sweatpants after a long day.
Natalie stood poised poised on the edge of a canyon being asked to walk a tight rope to the other side. But the longer she looked into his seeking eyes, the steadier that rope became until it turned int a full-fledged bridge. “I do it too,” she whispered in a rush, “I count the minutes until we’re breathing the same air again.”
Natalie, page 259
Read Tessa Bailey. Everything has ever written and every thing she will write. She’s fun and dirty and sweet. Everything is good romance should be.
The Saucy Mama 