Am I Becoming a Romance Girlie?????

 

TITLE: Unfortunately Yours (A Vine Mess #2)

AUTHOR: Tessa Bailey

PUBLISHER: Avon

PUBLISHING DATE: June 6, 2023

PAGES: 384   

SOURCE:Library

FROM GOODREADS: 

A down-on-her-luck Napa heiress suggests a mutually beneficial marriage of convenience to a man she can't stand... only to discover there's a fine line between love and hate. 

After losing her job and her fiancé in one fell swoop, Natalie Vos returned home to lick her wounds. A few months later, she's sufficiently drowned her sorrows in cabernet and she's ready to get back on her feet. She just needs her trust fund to finance her new business venture. Unfortunately, the terms require she marry before she can have the money. And well, dumped, remember? But Natalie is desperate enough to propose to a man who makes her want to kill him--and kiss him, in equal measure. 

August Cates may own a vineyard, but he doesn't know jack about making wine. He's determined to do his late best friend proud, no matter what it takes. Except his tasting room is empty, his wine is disgusting (seriously, he once saw someone gag), and his buddy's legacy is circling the drain. No bank will give him the loan he needs to turn the business around... and then the gorgeous, feisty heiress knocks on his door. Natalie has haunted his dreams since the moment they met, but their sizzling chemistry immediately morphed into simmering insults. 

Now, a quickie marriage could help them both. A sham wedding, a few weeks living under the same roof, and then they can go their separate ways--assuming they make it out alive. How hard could it be? There's just one thing they didn't account for: their unfortunate, unbearable, undeniable attraction.

MY THOUGHTS: To answer the above question - no.  However, I do fancy myself a mood reader and currently, I seem to be in a romance phase.  It also doesn't hurt that I discovered how much I love this author last year and that she has a healthy backlist as well as new books coming out all the time.

This book is actually the companion to Secretly Yours and it's hard to tell which one I enjoyed more.  In this one, Natalie has come back home after losing her high-profile finance job in New York.  She desperately wants to return and start her own firm but will need access to her trust first.  There's one hitch, she has to be married first.  August moved to town wanting to start a profitable vineyard to honor a former Navy Seal who was his best friend and who died in battle.  Trouble is he knows nothing about wine.  These two will need to team up to get what they want.  But there is one problem, they hate each other.

I love the enemies to lovers trope and it is in full force in Unfortunately Yours.  The back-and-forth banter, coupled with an undesirable attraction, make this an almost perfect read.  I really only had two small issues with the book.  One, at times August has almost a caveman attitude when it comes to Natalie and although cute at times, it really went overboard at others.  Also, Natalie deep down is her own worst enemy and there were moments I wished she would get out of her own way and allow happiness to happen,

Overall, this was a fun read and delivered everything I have come to expect from Tessa Bailey.  If you are looking for something light, fun and sometimes steamy, then I would definitely recommend you check this book out.  You don't have to necessarily read Secretly Yours first, but I do think it adds more to this one.  Oh, and Secretly Yours has dogs so why would you skip it?

RATING: 4 PAWS