Review: Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey ~ Smokin' Hot Book Blog

A brand new romantic comedy from New York Times bestseller Tessa Bailey

FIX HER UP by TESSA BAILEY

Series: Hot and Bothered #1

Publication date: June 11, 2019

Published by: Avon

Genre: contemporary romance, rom-com

SYNOPSIS

Georgette Castle’s family runs the best home renovation business in town, but she picked balloons instead of blueprints and they haven’t taken her seriously since. Frankly, she’s over it. Georgie loves planning children’s birthday parties and making people laugh, just not at her own expense. She’s determined to fix herself up into a Woman of the World... whatever that means.

Phase one: new framework for her business (a website from this decade, perhaps?)

Phase two: a gut-reno on her wardrobe (fyi, leggings are pants.)

Phase three: updates to her exterior (do people still wax?)

Phase four: put herself on the market (and stop crushing on Travis Ford!)

Living her best life means facing the truth: Georgie hasn’t been on a date since, well, ever. Nobody’s asking the town clown out for a night of hot sex, that’s for sure. Maybe if people think she’s having a steamy love affair, they’ll acknowledge she’s not just the “little sister” who paints faces for a living. And who better to help demolish that image than the resident sports star and tabloid favorite?

Travis Ford was major league baseball’s hottest rookie when an injury ended his career. Now he’s flipping houses to keep busy and trying to forget his glory days. But he can’t even cross the street without someone recapping his greatest hits. Or making a joke about his… bat. And then there's Georgie, his best friend’s sister, who is not a kid anymore. When she proposes a wild scheme—that they pretend to date, to shock her family and help him land a new job—he agrees. What’s the harm? It’s not like it’s real. But the girl Travis used to tease is now a funny, full-of-life woman and there’s nothing fake about how much he wants her...

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Praise for Fix Her Up:

“I could not stop smiling. Romantic comedy perfection.”
- Lauren Layne, New York Times bestselling author

“Fix Her Up was a complete, utter, unrelenting delight.”
- Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author

“Tessa does it again. I laughed, swooned and had to look over my shoulder to make sure no one was reading the sexy scenes with me. Well-written, with great pacing and lovable characters, I absolutely loved everything about Fix Her Up.”
- Mariana Zapata, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

“Small-town atmosphere permeates bestseller Bailey’s comedic contemporary... Delightfully intense and creative sex scenes and potent emotions will reward both fans and new readers alike.”
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“a lovable cast of meddling secondary characters... a charming subplot... The sexual relationship between Travis and Georgie is sizzling, but the emotional journey from fake relationship to true love is just as compelling. Don’t let the cover fool you: This romance is as steamy as it self-empowering.”
- Kirkus Reviews

“Bailey creates fireworks in this steamy novel as Georgie and Travis quickly break their own rules about their fake relationship. The story moves fluidly from one situation to the next, with lots of hot sex in between, and Bailey will keep readers on their toes as the “couple” starts to realize this might be the real thing. Perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Helena Hunting.”
- Booklist

“Fix Her Up is (so far) my favorite romance of 2019. The novel features well-drawn protagonists, who are as incredibly likable as they are lovable, and endearing secondary characters that jump off the page and into your heart... an authentic romance with humor, heart, incredible sex, and a refreshing depiction of female friendship. This is a must-read for all romance fans.”
- All About Romance (Desert Isle Keeper)

REVIEW

Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The rom-com has made a huge comeback and with the increase in popularity, the illustrated cover is literally everywhere you look. I'm a sucker for these adorable covers. I get why they're being used to attract readers in romance, but I believe the cover should be a representation of the inside and I really don't think that's the case with this one. It's even promoted as a rom-com which implies something light and sweet, and again, I don't think that's very fitting. To me this is general contemporary romance with very smutty, erotic parts. I'm not saying it was on the angsty side, or that there wasn't humor, but it was far from what I thought I was getting when I opened it up. Honestly, I came close to quitting in the first half of the book because Travis is exactly the cliche cocky bad boy hero that I dislike. Though I will admit that he worked through his relationship fears in the end and made quite the grand gesture to convince her that he was not only sorry, but committed for good.

Travis was the town hero and always destined for the major leagues. Everyone knew it, and when he finally made it, his popularity only increased in the public eye. Until the injury that robbed him of his hard earned career and left him bitter and angry at the world. He's back home feeling like a failure, wallowing in self-pity. Enter Georgie: his best friend's little sister. Instead of joining his pity party and patting his head, she gives him a dose of tough love.

I enjoyed Georgie from that very first scene. She has spirit and pulls no punches with Travis. However, with her family she struggles to stand up for herself and fails to make them respect her for the intelligent adult she is. They love her, but tend to underestimate her and treat her as if she's a silly child. In fact, in one scene, the whole family is arguing and she tries to interject with her opinion. Only to be shut down by her dad and told to "Let the adults handle this." The woman is 23 years old! You can imagine how embarrassing and frustrating that is. She's the only one who was not allocated a spot in the family company. Instead, she works as a clown entertaining children at birthday parties because she feels as if that's all she'll ever be in their eyes anyway.

The dismissive texts from her siblings were nothing new. But this desire to prove to them she was a capable adult only grew stronger.

Which brings me to his nickname for her. It's pretty much the worst thing you could possibly come up with for a heroine who is upset about being treated like a child. Yet he calls her baby girl and she melts into a puddle. I never understood what it was that she liked. He would regret when it would slip out, and she even found that sweet.

“Move up a little, baby girl.” Baby girl. She loved when he called her that. Probably because he winced every single time, like he couldn’t control the endearment.

When it came to Travis, I should have felt sympathetic because of his sudden upturned life. But he was too unlikeable for too long. In the beginning he didn't seem to care about anybody other than himself. Even Georgie's brother is supposedly his best friend yet he showed zero affection to him, never spent time with him, and they had nothing in common. Their friendship just wasn't believable to me. When it came to the heroine, he had to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't the little kid that he remembers when he left town for college. He's dismissive to her kindness to him and selfishly stands her up and breaks a promise to her without even planning to apologize. He did this knowing how much it hurt her when her family was a no-show to the brunch she worked really hard on. He does make amends later, but by that time I think it was a lost cause for me.

The two tropes listed in the synopsis are brother's best friend, and fake relationship. We also had the experienced guy with a reputation and the "good girl" virgin. I wasn't a fan. First of all, when he starts to notice her as a woman (of course only seriously after she ditches her thrift store clothes and dresses in expensive, revealing clothes) she hints that she's inexperienced and he immediately knows she's a virgin. He follows this internal revelation by thinking:

If he didn't kiss her, someone else would claim that first kiss. No. No, he didn't want that.

So now he's figured out that she has never been kissed? At 23 years old, a virgin is believable though not common. But I must be missing something. There is no way she graduated college and reached that age without EVER kissing anyone. It's really emphasized how she has no knowledge about boyfriends and relationships, and she's never even flirted on the phone. There wasn't actually a plausible reason given for the fact that she's supposedly never interacted with guys at all beyond the "friend zone." Despite this inexperience, she automatically "submits" to his orders in bed and demands rough sex. She begs him to teach her in bed, and repeatedly reassures him that she's fine with a temporary physical relationship that will end when their fake relationship ends in a couple of weeks. This is a guy she crushed on as a kid, fantasized about, and is now growing very adult feelings for him. But she'll take a couple of fake weeks with him.

Later in the book, we delve into why he keeps pushing her so firmly away the second he realizes he shows her affection. When he finally did break himself free from the chains of the past it was a brief moment of self-reflection and abruptly he was ready to enter into a serious relationship with her. There was finally some sweetness at the end, but it was mostly not a romance I would typically read or enjoy. Many will disagree. If you like a domineering, self-absorbed player, this could be just the book you're looking for.

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