It Happened One Summer (It Happened One Summer 1) by Tessa Bailey-a review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date July 13, 2021

Tessa Bailey is back with a Schitt’s Creek-inspired rom-com about a Hollywood “It Girl” who is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town… where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong.

Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar… in Washington.

Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face.

Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.

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REVIEW:IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER is the first instalment Tessa Bailey’s contemporary, adult IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER erotic, romance series. This is twenty-eight year old, Hollywood ‘It Girl’ Piper Bellinger, and fisherman Captain Brendan Taggart’s story line.

Told from dual third person perspectives (Brendan and Piper) IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER follows in the aftermath of Piper’s arrest for breaking and entering, and throwing a wild party where she didn’t belong. Piper is a ‘social media influencer’ whose life has been spiralling out of control. As punishment and to teach our heroine a lesson, her step-father Daniel reveals that her late father Henry Cross left her sister Hannah and Piper a bar in Westport, Washington, a small sea side town where Piper and Hannah, for the next three months, will learn to call home. Enter fisherman and widower Captain Brendan Taggart, and the man with whom Piper will fall in love. What ensues is the building romance and relationship between Piper and Brendan, and the potential fall-out as Piper’s time in Westport comes to an end.

Piper Bellinger is nothing but a social media influencer; a party girl with no education or plans for the future, and in this, she struggles with the minimal daily tasks such as laundry and cooking. Sent to Westport, Washington, Piper and Hannah have three months to turn their lives around, three months wherein Piper will fall in love, and Hannah begins to reconsider her own future back in LA. Piper had never considered calling Westport her home, and had plans to return to LA when her ‘sentence’ was over but fixing up her late father’s bar, and falling in love with our story line hero, gave Piper pause for the future, a future she had never stopped to considered. Brendan Taggart is a Westport townie, having grown up living and working on the sea. Widowed seven years earlier, Brendan had yet to move on but meeting Piper Bellinger gave Brendan hopes for a new future, a future involving our story line heroine.

The relationship between Piper Brendan begins acrimoniously as Brendan is unable to see beyond the trash and flash of our story line heroine but something about Piper stirs our story line hero, and Brendan is the first to fall for the woman who is beginning to make herself at home. The $ex scenes are intimate, erotic and intense.

We are introduced to a number of the local Westport citizens including Brendan’s friend Fox; his former father in law Mick Forrester; Piper and Hannah’s grandmother Opal Cross; Abe; Piper and Hannah’s step-father Daniel; Piper’s ex Adrian, and her LA friend Kirby.

IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER is inspired by the antics of Alexa on ‘Schitt’s Creek’, another social media influencer whose life experiences had never prepared her for the real world. The premise is entertaining and lively; the characters are spirited and sassy; the romance is provocative and energetic. Hannah’s story is next.

Copy supplied by Netgalley

Reviewed by Sandy