TEST
I’ve been the happy reader of a number of good books recently, but until Tessa Bailey’s Hook, Line, and Sinker, none of those good books have been ones I’ve read for review. Now I’m pleased to award my first DIK grade of 2022 to this thoroughly enjoyable, sexy and emotionally sweet story.
Hannah Bellinger is an LA-based production assistant who dreams of being a music coordinator for movies. She’s working on a romantic short directed by a guy who “once made the entire crew wear blindfolds on set so they wouldn’t dilute the magic of a scene by viewing it”, and on whom she has “a long–unrequited crush”. When a moment of inspiration leads her to speak up and successfully argue for shooting in Westport, the Washington town where her sister Piper (of It Happened One Summer) lives, Hannah finds herself temporarily relocated. But with Piper’s guest room already occupied, what’s a girl to do but stay “with Fox Thornton, king crab fisherman and a lady-killer of the highest caliber”, and Hannah’s text buddy of the past seven months (they met when she stayed in town previously – ‘previously’ as in not in this book?) Needless to say, the director doesn’t stand a chance.
The best way I can describe the pleasure of Hook, Line, and Sinker is that it does all the heavy lifting. It’s an effortless read that breezes along on unpretentious dialogue, endearing characters, and a solid romantic relationship. The only time I felt any need to exert myself in order to understand and enjoy the book was when Hannah made an unfamiliar music reference and even those moments were so few that I didn’t have time to lament my lack of musical knowledge.
Bailey has a knack for writing relationships that combine abundant emotional and physical chemistry. Fox has spent his life caught in family/romantic/professional environments where people have focused, to the exclusion of all else, on the fact that he’s a potently attractive man. Consequently, his sense of self has been crumbling under the weight of the innuendos, jokes, and assumptions people make about him. Hannah is refreshingly emotionally perceptive – she always sees through Fox, which keeps her from chasing all the red herrings he tosses out in a last-ditch attempt to keep her from getting too close lest she be disappointed by the man behind the “giant squid wrapped around an anchor” tattoo. Part of Hannah’s campaign to prove to Fox that she sees him as a person and not a sexy rest-stop on her life’s journey involves refusing to sleep with him early on. Thus, Hook, Line, and Sinker simmers longer than other Bailey books do, and feels just a little less graphic than some of the others. But note that I say “little” – there’s still enough outdoor cunnilingus to merit the hot rating(!)
The book’s only real weakness is a slightly rushed last act. The break-up/low point results from a ‘falling at the first hurdle’ situation, and the first hurdle in question doesn’t feel big enough to merit such a response. And the emotional resolution comes so hard, fast, and perfect on the heels of the low point that it’s a little unbelievable. With a few more pages and development these issues could have been vanquished, but as it is they’re the equivalent of a tiny hole in a sweater: not large enough to impair function or overall style, but just detectable enough to be faintly frustrating.
Honestly, all I can say is I hope next time Tessa Bailey does a series about siblings she takes a page from Bridgerton and gives the family eight kids instead of two. Perhaps she’ll reveal a secret half-sister and reward us with a third book to turn the Bellinger Sisters duology into a trilogy? A girl can dream.
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Grade: A
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 01/03/22
Publication Date: 03/2022
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Part-time cowgirl, part-time city girl. Always working on converting all my friends into romance readers ("Charlotte, that was the raunchiest thing I have ever read!").
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Wow, did we read different books? lol I could not get into this one at all. I DNF’d at the 70 percent mark.
Tessa is usually a hit or miss for me and always in the extreme sense: I either love it to the depths of my being or want to hurl the book against the wall. This one was the latter.
Not enough heat/hot sex for me, which is what I am usually guaranteed in a Bailey book so that was disappointing The character development felt really flat and unbelievable. In fact, everything the main characters did with each other felt flat and unbelievable. The chemistry and banter felt forced and unnatural. I didn’t buy Fox’s “oh no I’m such a manho and she’s too good for me” act, which is one of my least favorite tropes in romance. It felt immature and everything he did seemed like he was way younger than he actually was (31). Hannah’s personality was making playlists-not a good character. Her saviour complex over Fox didn’t help either.
WAY TOO MANY INNER MONOLOGUES (tessa does this a lot but I can usually tolerate it; not in this one). Too little action. Too little romance. Dull,dull, dull with a few scraps thrown now and then to make one hope there would be some actual drama or intrigue or TENSION. Where was the tension? We knew everything from the get-go (fox is obsessed from day one) and nothing changed. The will-they or won’t they was tedious as hell when it was mainly caused by Fox being a self-loathing weirdo. I found myself frustrated and annoyed with everything these two did or said.
Finally, it was SLOW. The book crawled, the pacing was mind-numbing. If the insanely long inner monologues were cut, this could have been a novella. I’m pretty disappointed.
It Happened One Summer was a fun romp with interesting characters/great sex. The sequel left much to be desired.
This one didn’t do it for me either. I think Bailey is often hit or miss in her series. I loved Tools of Engagement but hated Love Her Or Lose Her. Loved Chase Me but couldn’t get into Need Me at all.
I haven’t read HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER yet, but I totally agree with the hit-or-miss nature of Bailey’s work. Going into one of her books, I never know if I’ll be getting “Tessa Bailey, Queen of the dirty-talking alpha heroes, take-charge heroines, and smoking-hot sex scenes” or “Tessa Bailey, Queen of the boorish alpha-holes and inexplicably TSTL heroines.” I loved IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER—which, to me, was a great balance of emotion, personal growth, and hot sexy-times—so I am interested in Hannah & Fox’s story (for, as noted below, the right price), but I guess I’ll go in with lowered expectations.
I loved the first in this series, now I’m just waiting for this one to show up at my library! Thanks for the great review :-)
Definitely plan on reading when the book comes down in price. Thanks for the review.
I loved IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER and I’m really looking forward to HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER, but unless my library has it, I’m waiting for a sale. As I mentioned in the March releases post, $10.99 for an ebook is too rich for my blood.
Slightly o/t, but regarding the music references: as someone old enough to remember years of taping a penny to the record-needle arm to prevent the record from skipping, I fail to see the charm in vinyl records (which Hannah loves and collects). Also, it was quite disconcerting for someone who once had shelves full of LPs and singles, to encounter a line in IT HAPPENED INE SUMMER where it was obvious that Bailey thought “45” refers to an album (iirc, Bailey has made that mistake before in an earlier book). Tessa Bailey and her copy-editors are probably too young to know, but “45” is a single record, “33” is an album/lp.
/Here endeth the arcana.
While I realize LPs are “outdated” technology, isn’t pretty inexcusable to 33’s and 45’s mixed up. I once read a book where a supposed expert got the pattern of inheritance for hemophilia wrong and I literally banged my head on the table.
Note to authors and editors: When your character is suppose to be knowledgeable about something, you need to do the research, too.
*it’s pretty inexcusable to get… (sorry)
I don’t remember the exact passage in IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER, but Hannah is very excited because Fox found her “the 45 of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours,” which—for those of us who played it endlessly in 1977 would know—is not a 45, but an album (LP/33). It’s weird—we often referred to our singles as 45s (as in, “I just spent my allowance to buy the 45 of Horse with No Name”), but we rarely called albums 33s. They were always albums or LPs.
/Yes, I’m old. And stay off my lawn!
It’s so funny you would mention Horse With No Name. My 25 year olds LOVE that song. My daughter just posted about it on Insta. Their love for it cracks me up.
Oh my goodness!! Such memories! Horse With No Name was my brother’s favorite 45, and he played endlessly :)
The only way Hannah’s reference would make sense would be if they did release a 45 of the single, Rumors???? A kid may not have the $$ to buy the whole album, but a 45 might be within reach….
Rumours is the name of the album; there is no song with that title on the album. (It is a great album…I can still sing the words to every song on it.)
And can I just say again how much I love Daisy and the Jones and the Six….
Okay…this is why I should never respond before I am fully caffeinated!! I know that Rumours is the album name–heck, I have the album, still LOVE it, and also can sing all the words to every song on it. Yet forgot that there is actually no “Rumours” single, lol!!
I have read this book and… this isn’t the only area in which Hannah’s supposed deep passion for music and soundtrack creation didn’t work for me.
“co-sign”
But aren’t LPs back among millennials? I went to a Tinariwen concert sometime before Covid shut everything down. The audience was one of the most diverse I’ve ever seen, with people of all ages but skewing young-ish (20s and 30s). When the concert was over and I went to buy a CD, I saw people carrying flat, square items that I thought were calendars, but when I got close realized were LPs.
Vinyl is big among millennials and younger although it’s nothing compared to streaming. We use our record player regularly and I do buy my husband some vinyl. It’s not cheap!
Yes, my youngest’s b/f – 21 – is big into vinyl and Mr. Caz still has loads of what are probably now “classics” he’s had since the seventies! They don’t get played all that often, but they do get the occasional airing. I was a music student in the mid 80s when CDs were really taking off, and then worked in the record industry from the early 90s and remember many journalists and broadcasters bemoaning the more “clinical” ambient sound quality of CDs as opposed to vinyl.
It turns out that 99% of the music listeners in the world don’t care about the difference between vinyl and streaming. It really matters much more the quality of your speakers. I’ve listened to our vinyl and then the same album on Spotify. We just have Sonos speakers so it doesn’t make any real difference. But I have a friend who has a recording studio and there you can tell a difference.
I’ll just reiterate my contention that if you spent your youth taping a penny to the needle-arm of your record player, you are well within your rights to bid farewell to vinyl forever. I have absolutely no nostalgia about listening to vinyl—I don’t think the pops & hisses make the sound richer or deeper—although there were some beautiful album covers (I was at a party once where the hosts’ walls were lined with framed album covers and it made an nice decor element) and my old eyes now realize what a benefit it was to have a lyric sheet in a readable font size. Lol
It really is a matter of choice. I don’t miss my vinyl either!
This is an interesting article about the difference.