It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️ | Plot: 📚📚📚 | Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Length: 397 pages | Genre: Contemporary Romance | POV: Third


🕊️ ➞ Tropes:

🥰😒 Grumpy / Sunshine 😒🥰
🐌❤️‍🔥Slow Burn ❤️‍🔥🐌
☕️🍂❤️Cozy Romance ❤️🍂☕️
😍He Falls First 😍
😒👫Forced Proximity👫😒
⚔️❤️‍🔥Enemies to Lovers❤️‍🔥⚔️


🕊️ ➞ Progress Notes & Initial Thoughts:

This one will be quick, took me almost a year to finish this book. And I had to listen to the audiobook for the last 200 pages just to finish it.




🕊️ ➞ Plot Breakdown & Commentary:

Piper was a rich party girl whose longest relationship lasted three weeks. She was in her late 20s. Sad. After embarrassing her rich stepfather for the last time, he sent her off to her biological father’s hometown, Westport, WA, to fix up his old pub. Feeling bad for her, Piper’s younger sister joined her as well. Immediately, the duo was met with standoffish townies and the disgruntled “owner” of the pub, Brendan. Brendan had been keeping the bar running in recent years and was reluctant to let it go.

Most of the plot was the main characters fighting their attraction, Brendan seeing that Piper wasn’t as vain and dumb as he thought, and Piper trying to decide if she’d stay. Eventually, they ended up together after 350+ pages of needless conflict and the push and pull of a slow burn.



🕊️ ➞ Closing Thoughts:

I feel as if no one on Booktok has actually read a spicy novel because, for the love of God, this WASN’T SPICY! Stop staying these cozy a$$ books (I’m talking to you, Icebreaker) are spicy and lying to your viewers. Just because the MMC is good at d!rty talk doesn’t mean it’s spicy, especially if it takes over 125 pages for the characters to do anything other than give each other smoldering eye contact. So, please do yourself a favor and read an actual spicy novel. FFS.



Whew, glad I got that out. ANYWAYS, I enjoyed the novel (when I finally finished it). It was a cute, sweet, and cozy romance that leaves your heart feeling all warm and fuzzy. Guaranteed HEA.

If you’ve read It Happened One Summer, comment your thoughts!


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