Review: Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey

Title: Hook, Line, and Sinker
Author: Tessa Bailey
Series: Bellinger Sisters #2
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: March 1, 2022
Edition: 400 pages, Kindle Edition
Source: Library
Purchase: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | BAM | Book Depository | Bookshop | Powell's | Thriftbooks

Synopsis:

   King crab fisherman Fox Thornton has a reputation as a sexy, carefree flirt. Everyone knows he's a guaranteed good time--in bed and out--and that's exactly how he prefers it. Until he meets Hannah Bellinger. She's immune to his charm and looks, but she seems to enjoy his... personality? And wants to be friends? Bizarre. But he likes her too much to risk a fling, so platonic pals it is.
   Now, Hannah's in town for work, crashing in Fox's spare bedroom. She knows he's a notorious ladies' man, but they're definitely just friends. In fact, she's nursing a hopeless crush on a colleague and Fox is just the person to help with her lackluster love life. Armed with a few tips from Westport's resident Casanova, Hannah sets out to catch her coworker's eye... yet the more time she spends with Fox, the more she wants him instead. As the line between friendship and flirtation begins to blur, Hannah can't deny she loves everything about Fox, but she refuses to be another notch on his bedpost.
   Living with his best friend should have been easy. Except now she's walking around in a towel, sleeping right across the hall, and Fox is fantasizing about waking up next to her for the rest of his life and... and... man overboard! He's fallen for her, hook, line, and sinker. Helping her flirt with another guy is pure torture, but maybe if Fox can tackle his inner demons and show Hannah he's all in, she'll choose him instead?
   In the follow-up to It Happened One Summer, Tessa Bailey delivers another deliciously fun rom-com about a former player who accidentally falls for his best friend while trying to help her land a different man...

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I liked this book, but I didn't love this book the way I loved It Happened One Summer. 

 

I really loved Fox and Hannah's dynamic, it was cute at times, and they actually talked to each other when things got rough. It helps that they did have a friendship that they were building their relationship on and actually talked to each other about stuff. There was no obnoxious miscommunication to deal with.

I know this would never work for pacing in a book, but I would have liked if they had got together a lot sooner in the book and that Fox had confronted everybody who treated him like a "hall pass" sooner, and that all those people got to see how he wasn't what they thought. That Hannah was somebody special to him. He gets to confront both his mother and his best friend, but everybody else... they just as far as the reader knows, gets away with treating him the way they do.

I believe that Fox sees Hannah differently than he looked at other women in the past, likely because she looked and talked him differently than other woman have. It helped him form a real relationship with her before things got physical. They talked about normal things and had real conversations. What I don't buy, is that Hannah never convinced him to talk to a therapist. That kind of deep seeded mental trauma from being expected to be a certain way before he even knew what it meant doesn't go away over night, no matter how understanding and supportive your partner or spouse is.

 

I plan to read more Tessa Bailey though. I like the way she writes characters to have layers to them. They aren't one-note in my opinion, and I like her writing style.