Tessa Bailey is originally from Carlsbad, California. The day after high school graduation, she packed her yearbook, ripped jeans, and laptop and drove cross-country to New York City in under four days. Her most valuable life experiences were learned thereafter while waitressing at K-Dees, a Manhattan pub owned by her uncle. Inside those four walls, she met her husband and her best friend and discovered the magic of classic rock, and she managed to put herself through Kingsborough Community College and the English program at Pace University at the same time. Several stunted attempts to enter the workforce as a journalist followed, but romance writing continued to demand her attention. She now lives in Long Island, New York, with her husband and daughter. Although she is severely sleep-deprived, she is incredibly happy to be living her dream of writing about people falling in love. Catch her on TikTok at @authortessabailey or check out tessabailey.com for a complete list of books. You can find more of my reviews of Tessa's works here.
Hair, makeup, clothing, decor . . . everything in Bethany Castle's world is organized, planned, and styled to perfection. Which is why the homes she designs for her family's real estate business are the most coveted in town. The only thing not perfect? Her track record with men. She's on a dating hiatus and after helping her friends achieve their dreams, Bethany finally has time to focus on her own: flip a house, from framework to furnishings, all by herself. Except her old brother runs the company and refuses to take her seriously. When a television producer gets wind of the Castle sibling rivalry, they're invited on Flip Off, a competition to see who can do the best renovation. Bethany wants bragging rights, but she needs a crew and the only member of her brother's construction team willing to jump ship is Wes Daniels, the new guy in town. His Texas drawl and handsome face got under Bethany's skin on day one, and the last thing she needs is some cocky young cowboy in her way. As the race to renovate heats up, Wes and Bethany are forced into close quarters, trading barbs and biting banter as they remodel the ugliest house on the block. It's a labor of love, hate, and everything in between, and soon sparks are flying. But Bethany's perfectly structured life is one kiss away from going up in smoke and she knows falling for a guy like Wes would be a flipping disaster.
In the first two books of the series, Bethany seemed like the most relatable character to me, despite her short cameos. When Wes entered the picture in Love Her or Lose Her, these two stole the spotlight of every scene they were part of. Getting to finally see them interact and grow on the page of their own book was exciting. Bailey really does them justice in a way that we didn't see in the other books. Bethany is super relatable, because she believes she always has to be perfect, and so watching her grow to realize she doesn't have to be that way all the time is great. And watching Wes let down his walls and make plans for his life and for himself casts the whole book in a really vulnerable.
Wes's and Bethany's banter is also hilarious. The way they joke and rib one another, and then the way they reveal their secrets and feelings to one another, goes to show that their relationship has many different layers of intimacy. Add on top of that Wes's situation raising a kid, and Wes and Bethany are thrown through so many loops that make their relationship stronger, and that make their breaking points more heartbreaking and believable. Overall, I found that their relationship was the best developed in the series.
Bailey puts pressure on her characters by sticking them in this reality TV type situation: Bethany and Stephen must face-off for the cameras, and whoever has thee best flip gets the ultimate sibling bragging rights. I wasn't entirely sure this was the best way to put pressure on Bethany's relationships with Stephen and Wes, but it did exactly what it had to do: puts Wes and Bethany in close quarters, and gives Stephen a reason to begin seeing Bethany in a different light. Bailey focuses on Wes's and Bethany's relationship the most in the book, of course, but she utilizes these outside pressures to also focus on other relationships, such as Bethany's relationships with her family members, the Just Us league relationships, and Wes's relationship with Laura and Laura's mother. All the different outside pressures work well to help develop this relationship fully.
This may be the end of the series for characters in Port Jefferson, but Tessa Bailey has a lot more books under her belt and forthcoming. Catch her on TikTok at @authortessabailey or check out tessabailey.com for a complete list of books. You can find more of my reviews of Tessa's works here.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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