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.
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.
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