This book was a huge letdown for me.

After finishing the first book, I was excited to read Natalie's story. She intrigued me, and I was thrilled to read about her getting her happy ending. However, this wasn't even close to what I expected.

First, there was way too much discussion about August's male parts. Why was I reading about his dick on literally the first page? Also, why did it happen to work its way into nearly every conversation? It just seemed like sloppy writing, and that the author had no idea how to make them have chemistry. It was one of the biggest turn offs of this book.

The other was how August had zero backbone and fell into instalove. Him and Natalie were acting the same exact way every time, yet he was in the middle of having a heart attack because he felt like he was messing up. It was boring and redundant.

To be honest, the more I write this review, the more irritated I get.

I received an ARC of this book and ended up not reading it right away so I could read Secretly Yours first.

I had major ick for certain parts of both and I can’t get past it. Focusing on this book, can we please never use terms of endearment like princess or sweetheart (special place in hell for men who say a woman is a good girl when she comes for him 🫠) for grown adult women? I seize up every time.

The other thing that had my hackles up is the reliance on extremely narrow gender stereotypes. Primarily the description of August’s penis size basically being portrayed as some magically perfect appendage. Why are so many MMC slinging big dicks? Natalie’s body is equally perfect so it’s not one sided. I’m glad August has more depth than just being a perfect physical specimen, but I also feel like he has a lot of class clown, goon characteristics too. He seems like “that guy” from high school . I don’t know, they just fell into the whole thing so quickly and there was no drama for me. I hate an unearned third act breakup but like nothing major happened in the story. Kudos to the epilogue though cause that was super cute.

*And maybe I missed it but how in the hell did a retired Navy SEAL afford to buy a vineyard in Napa at all? Someone explain this to me!

This is the second in a series. Tessa Bailey set up Natalie as an abrasive, privileged heir to a wine fortune. Slowly we learn Natalie has grit, and August is set up as a grumpy ex navy seal that thinks he's better than everyone. As we get to know these 2 we find that they are good souls with rough parts in the own way. Their love story is a treat to read!

A Marriage of Convenience between enemies? Sign me up.
Natalie is back in her hometown after losing her job and fiancé in New York. August is a retired Navy Seal in Napa hoping to fulfill his buddy’s dream of opening a winery. August’s winery is on the verge of closing and Natalie needs money to start a new business, with no other choice they get married so Natalie can have access to her trust fund.
I absolutely loved how Natalie and August’s story unfolded, and how they came to love each other despite all their past struggles. Tessa Bailey outdid herself with this book. 10/10 would recommend!!

⭐️: 4.5/5- nothing can compare to It Happens One Summer & Hook, Line, and Sinker (two of my favorite books of all time) but this one is so good! Tessa Bailey said that August is her favorite Hero she’s ever written- and I can see why. August and Natalie have the steamiest chemistry, the most playful banter, and the most protective love 🫶🏼 I struggle to love enemies to lovers because I want everyone to be nice to each other 🤣 but in her acknowledgments she says “What is going to make me feel better after the harshly spoken words?” The answer came to me right away. I need irrefutable proof that the hero has loved the heroine all along.” And you definitely feel that. If you like enemies to lovers and marriage of convenience this may be your favorite Tessa Bailey book ever 💕

📖: “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.”

🌶️: 4/5 Tessa Bailey has a way with words 🥵

I absolutely loved this book. The first book in the Vine Mess Series set up the quirky small town-esque vibe, but also showed Natalie and August's fateful hatred. It was set up so perfectly and had fans itching for book two, and let me tell you it did not disappoint.
August is just such a great guy that honestly just doesn't know how to speak to Natalie and his reasons for his vineyard are just so wholesome. Both need money, and a marriage of convenience is a very quick way to get it...but when they are both faced with opportunities to back out of the marriage, neither of them go for it.
I loved the dynamic between Natalie and August and how August tried to effectively communicate with Natalie to ensure that his jokes never went too far or they were truly angry for long.

Overall the book has a lot of amazing tropes and great writing. I would highly recommend this to everyone interested in romcoms and marriage of convenience tropes.

This was a GREAT story to listen to! AWESOME narration! Great main characters. The plot was easy to find. The story was engaging and easy to follow. Will be purchasing this book. Shout out to Netgalley and publishing for allowing me to listen and review this story.

4 STARS!

Secretly Yours was such a fun book, so I was so excited that the wait for Unfortunately Yours wasn't that long. Especially after I found out this would be a marriage of convenience romance, which is a favorite trope of mine. This book ended up being everything I wanted and more!

Natalie is still recovering from the fallout in New York, but just wants to get back on her feet. When she realizes that she can't get the money she needs without a marriage, she's just angry. And she should be! It's a ridiculous clause to have in the first place. My heart broken for Natalie at times. She really felt like she couldn't do anything right or wasn't worthy when it came to her family. I loved seeing her stand up for herself and realizing what she was worth.

August didn't need long for me to add him to the top of my book boyfriend list! August was just a big teddy bear. He was so caring and wasn't afraid of telling everyone what he felt. He was grieving for his best friend and just wanted to realize his dream of having his own wine. August needed to stop blaming himself and realize he didn't have to do everything all by himself. Natalie really brought that out in him and it was amazing. August is also very protective and will do anything to keep people safe. Even if it takes him a little to realize what's stopping him from having everything he really wants.

Natalie and August start out as enemies, but their chemistry was there from the start. I loved their banter and when they started pranking each other I couldn't stop smiling while I was reading. This book gets steamy, but it builds gradually and the tension jumped off of the pages. The grand gesture and epilogue made my heart happy.

My review will be posted on https://thebookdutchesses.com on July 8th!

We love a Tessa book and this was no different. Well written and beautifully executed. Took me too long to start this one honestly.

Use your gut, or other body parts if you must ;)

Natalie Vos has lost everything and is back in the guest house with her brother. This is not how her life was supposed to go. She was supposed to make her life outside of wine. That is until she meets August who just like her has given up due to a lack of funding. Together they come up with the plan to get married so Natalie can secure her trust fund and August can secure a small business loan from the bank. That is, until outside forces say otherwise. Will this ruse hold up, or will they get caught by the one man who could ruin it all?

What I loved about this book:
~Dual Pov
~Sarcasm
~Marriage of Convivence
~Military Vet
~Witty Banter
~Hate to Love
~Spice

This fake relationship/marriage of convenience and enemies to lovers romcom was very incredibly overflowing with heart. August is my very newest book boyfriend. He would literally do anything and everything for Natalie (I accidentally typed "to" instead of "for" the first time, but that applies too). It really seemed like every cell in his body wept to make Natalie his, heart and soul.

I kind of thought things went really hard really fast between them (whoops! I did it again!). I don't know if it's possible to fall in love that fast, but it worked well for the book. I thought the book was fairly spicey, maybe a 3/5.

Thanks to Avon/Harper Voyager US and NetGalley for the gifted copy. All thoughts are my own.

It is fun to see the number of times that Tessa Bailey can get the words "Navy Seal" in a book. Some of the descriptions of emotions are quite detailed and funny. But, in all seriousness this was a good, quick read. I did quite enjoy the characters standing up for each other and the developing of their feelings. If you liked the pace of My Killer Vacation, I would say this one is similar.

Tessa Bailey strikes again! While I almost always love marriages of convenience, this book was special. For starters, it was so incredibly funny! From page one onward, I couldn’t stop laughing out loud at their banter. Natalie and August had amazing banter and chemistry. Honestly, the two pages of them interacting in Secretly Yours was my favorite part of that book, so getting a full book of that banter was spectacular. I also think both main characters were very fleshed-out characters with a lot of development. They felt like real people to me in a way that I haven’t experienced in a long time. I think this book got me out of my book slump, which is the greatest compliment I can give a book!

*I received a copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this opportunity*

Natalie Vos will do just about anything to return to New York City. Leaving quietly after a scandal in the finance world, Natalie is forced to return to her childhood home in St. Helena, California and relive all her greatest failures. She's come to terms with the fact that she'll never outrun her past, but that doesn't mean she's not eager to leave it all behind her.

August Cates is just trying to fulfill his best friend's dream of running a winery, but he's actually shit at making wine. After one final failure, August decides to throw in the towel and try something new.

The two get along about as well as oil and water, but when the opportunity to get married comes around-- it may just be the key to both of their success (individual success, of course).

This book is so chock-full of tropes I was worried, it has: enemies to lovers, fake marriage, sunshine/grumpy, second chance... just to name a few of the most well-known tropes. However, Bailey somehow manages to pull everything together and create a really fun and addicting story in UNFORTUNATELY YOURS. Probably my favorite Tessa Bailey book to date, it's got spice, it's got pining, and it's got lots of wine.

The way August falls so hard for Natalie and is endlessly devoted to her…LOVE that we got plenty of “my wife” moments from him as well 😍😍😍

**thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-arc in exchange for an honest review**

Thank you so much to Avon and Harper Voyager and NetGalley for this ARC of Unfortunately Yours in exchange for an honest review. I'll be honest: Tessa Bailey has always been a bit of a hit-or-miss for me. For Unfortunately Yours, she captured me with her usual hilarity and immediate sizzling between August and Natalie, and of course, I am a sucker for a good marriage of convenience. I think this delivered!

Natalie is an heiress who needs to be married in order to inherit her money, and August wants to make his best friend proud at the vineyard but, to be completely frank, he absolutely sucks at his job. Natalie gets what she wants from August, August gets what he wants from Natalie in this fake marriage and they think they can just go their separate ways but of course, do not. I loved the chemistry between our main characters, and I just overall had a really good time. I felt the romantic tension, I laughed out loud, and that's all I can really say about this book. It was wholeheartedly a great time.

First off, if you’re going to read this book do yourself a favor and check out the audiobook. Callie Dalton does an incredible job at narrating! Unfortunately Yours is a fun and at times over the top marriage of convince by Tessa Bailey. It’s a ‘he falls first’ and the hero is possessive and obsessed in the best way. It took a while for me to connect with the heroine, but with time I liked her too. I enjoyed the romance overall, I wish it would have went deeper into the hero’s past and grief and we would have gotten more time with them as an established couple.

This one is an improvement over the first book in the series, but it’s not fantastic. I just didn’t love the characters or the way things went. I don’t think I’m a hard core romance reader anymore, and that’s okay. I don’t think I’ll be venturing into any more of this authors work anytime soon.

Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy.

Tessa Bailey is a popular draw for our Romance shelf, so we ordered Secretly Yours and chose it as one a Book Club pick for our Adult Romance book club. We were excited to see that there was a second book in this companion series, so we gave it a shot, however we agree with our book club attendees: her older books were more enjoyable.

Spicy rom com involving a marriage of convenience between a Wall Street smartie and former Navy SEAL set in Napa wine country. Chock full of banter, steamy pillow talk and chuckles. I couldn’t help but laugh each time big intimidating August would practically pass out with worry any time his wife so much as stubbed a toe. To say he is protective is an understatement! But in a cute way. He’s completely enamored with Natalie. And has great cringey lines like “I’m not entering the palace without paying homage to the queen.” Definitely an improvement over Secretly Yours. It’s a fun read… and you don’t want to miss the epilogue!
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!