June 3rd, 2026
Home | Log in!
Welcome to FreshFiction

Are you a reader
or an author?

Help us personalize your experience. Choose your role below.
You can always change this later using the switcher button.

or

You can switch anytime using the floating button.

Limited Time Fresh Fiction Access

Exclusive Marketing Opportunities for Authors

Curious about how Fresh Access helps authors gain more visibility and connect with active readers?

Discover premium promotional opportunities, enhanced exposure, and author-focused services designed to help your books stand out.

Read More →
On Top Shelf
Fresh Pick
WAIT WITH ME
★ Fresh Access for Authors 📚 New Books This Week 📰 Latest News 🎪 Reader Games πŸ–οΈ Summer Kick Off Giveaways

Love, Danger, Homecomings & Heart β€” Your June Reading Escape Starts Here

Slideshow image


Since your web browser does not support JavaScript, here is a non-JavaScript version of the image slideshow:

slideshow image
One disastrous night. One devastating man. One diabolical proposition.


slideshow image
He’s stubborn. She’s tougher. His kid? Already picked the bride.


slideshow image
A small-town second chance wrapped in danger, desire, and Sharon Sala heart.


slideshow image
She came home to save the ranch… and found the cowboy she never forgot.


slideshow image
From reality TV heartbreak to real-life reinvention.


slideshow image
A missing twin. A deadly cartel. One K-9 team caught in the crossfire.


SECRETLY YOURS

Secretly Yours, February 2023
by Tessa Bailey

Avon
Featuring: Hallie Welch; Julian Vos
384 pages
ISBN: 0063238985
EAN: 9780063238985
Kindle: B09ZYD8YZ4
Paperback / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Purchase

"Like a Hallmark Movie with a Filthy Talker"

Fresh Fiction Review

SECRETLY YOURS
Tessa Bailey

Reviewed by S. Lyn Collins
Posted February 7, 2023

Romance Comedy | Women's Fiction Contemporary

SECRETLY YOURS is the first in Tessa Bailey's A Vine Mess series and is chock full of romance tropes.  Set in (real) small town St. Helena in the Napa Valley, landscaper Hallie was raised and taught about gardening by her grandmother.  Now, she is in mourning and trying to protect all that was important to her grandmother including committing mayhem in the process. 

Julian, the prodigal son of a major local winery, returns to town while on a sabbatical from his college professor position to write a book.  Julian also happens to be the man she compared every other man to as she dreamed and fantasized from the age of fourteen. 

Julian is obsessed with schedules and structure whereas Hallie is flighty and impetuous when it comes to time management and organization. Their backstories explain the reasons for their actions.  Of course, grumpy is inexplicably drawn to sunshine.  To complicate their attraction, Hallie decides to leave secret admirer letters for Julian to work through her 15-year crush. 

SECRETLY YOURS is a charming rom-com with well-developed main characters that flows like a Hallmark movie with a slow burn and a filthy-mouthed protagonist.  The supporting characters are engaging but fairly flat.  Hopefully, they will become more nuanced in the books to follow. Enjoyed the book enough to want to read the next one. 

Learn more about SECRETLY YOURS

SUMMARY

From #1 New York Times bestselling author and TikTok favorite Tessa Bailey comes a steamy new rom-com about a starchy professor and the bubbly neighbor he clashes with at every turn...

Hallie Welch fell hard for Julian Vos at fourteen, after they almost kissed in the dark vineyards of his family’s winery. Now the prodigal hottie has returned to their small Napa town. When Hallie is hired to revamp the gardens on the Vos estate, she wonders if she’ll finally get that smooch. But the grumpy professor isn’t the teenager she remembers and their polar opposite personalities clash spectacularly. One wine-fueled girls’ night later, Hallie can’t shake the sense that she did something reckless—and then she remembers the drunken secret admirer letter she left for Julian. Oh shit.

On sabbatical from his ivy league job, Julian plans to write a novel. But having Hallie gardening right outside his window is the ultimate distraction. She’s eccentric, chronically late, often literally covered in dirt—and so unbelievably beautiful, he can’t focus on anything else. Until he finds an anonymous letter sent by a woman from his past. Even as Julian wonders about this admirer, he’s sucked further into Hallie’s orbit. Like the flowers she plants all over town, Hallie is a burst of color in Julian’s grey-scale life. For a man who irons his socks and runs on tight schedules, her sunny chaotic energy makes zero sense. But there’s something so familiar about her... and her very presence is turning his world upside down.

EXCERPT

No excerpt available.

BOOK SERIES


 

 

 

© 2003-2026 off-the-edge.net  all rights reserved Privacy Policy