The gardener and the professor.
The sunshine and the grump.
The chaos and the schedules.
Tessa Bailey was one of the first romance authors I’ve discovered. I’ve loved the first book I’ve read by her, which was “It happened one summer”. But somehow, I haven’t read another good book by her. Hear me out, “Hook, Line and Sinker” was fine. Not her best, but also not her worst. The worst one would be “My Killer Vacation”, which was almost traumatic with the bad writing and no plot points and weird smut. This one was fine. Just fine. Not bad, but also not good.
Hallie has had a crush on this guy from her hometown for years. And yes, at first I was really confused because the vibes of this book really gave Italy and Tuscany, but no, it’s in California. That was already a huge disappointment. Anyways, the dude she liked comes back from his work as a professor at a university to write a book. And he is kind of strict with his schedules and his time management. On the other hand, Hallie really isn’t. She has been kind of letting it go after the death of her grandma and just hasn’t been taking care of herself. She gets in situations just because she is impulsive and now apparently lives kind of risky, for example attempted theft. Or damaging property. Just because she isn’t okay with change. And I kind of understand that, from the death of her grandmother. Anyways, after she sees Julian (her crush) again, she gets drunk one night and writes him an anonymous love letter. And from there on we kinda see them switch places, Julian starts to let go of his tight schedules and Hallie tries to get some control back over her life.
When I first read the description of the book, I was really excited. And yeah, maybe I had to high hopes. Because it did not live up to my expectations. Something just really didn’t feel right. And Julian had a kind of weird obsession with her and it just didn’t sit right. But my biggest issue with the book was that it took place in California, in a copy of something with history. Just didn’t feel authentic and it really would have made the book better. Take the original place, not the cheap US copy.
