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A review by solaceinprose
Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey
4.0
Review added on 8/30/21:
I was given an ARC by Avon and Harper Voyager via Netgalley for an honest review.
It's not often I find the second book of a series better than the first, but this was definitely the case with Hook, Line, and Sinker. I wasn't sure if I was going to like Fox at first (I'm kind of tired of attractive white men bemoaning about being attractive and how that's only what people think they're good for), but I was pleasantly surprised by how much depth he had. He wasn't just an attractive white man bemoaning on how attractive he was, but had a lot of unresolved self-image issues based on his childhood that really was no fault of his own. Talk about a product of your environment. I ended up liking him so much more than Brendan in the first book, and I felt that he had far more growth than Brendan. I also really liked Hannah, and I liked how we could see her come into her own and gain the confidence she needed to move upward with her job. How she ever liked Sergei, I have no idea because I wanted to punch him in the face numerous times, but I guess that whole tortured artist bullshit doesn't work with me. Character wise, I liked Hannah and Fox far more than I liked Piper and Brendan, even after they realized that they liked each other more than friends.
The whole friends to lover trope is one of my favorites, and this one didn't skimp on the good stuff. We got to see how their friendship built through their texts, their interactions for six months after Hannah left to go back to LA. We saw their relationship grow, and it wasn't this instant love as with Piper and Brendan. Hannah and Fox felt more real than their predecessors. Fox also wasn't a jealous buffoon who didn't think with only his dick half the time. By the time Fox and Hannah revealed that they liked each other and wanted to be with each other, I believed it. It wasn't a slow slow burn, but it was slow enough to really get me invested as a reader.
Tessa has a really bad habit of making her previous characters even worse than in their first book. That whole, "Don't fuck my fiance's sister because it could end up bad for me" with Brendan enraged me so badly, and I don't know why Fox was even friends with him in the first place. Did Brendan make amends? Kind of? I don't know, I stopped caring what he had to say after his selfishness in the beginning. Piper wasn't any better, warning Hannah to stay only as friends with Fox because she "heard" about him and didn't want her sister to end up as another "notch in the bedpost." Not like Hannah was a grown ass woman with her own agency to make up her own mind. Honestly, I was surprised at how little time Piper and Brendan had in this book, but I can't say it wasn't better for it.
For me, this book was several inches better than the first one, and I'm interested to see how it reads when it comes out edited and completed. The epilogue was a bit too schmaltzy for me, but it's a rom-com so I'll allow it.
I was given an ARC by Avon and Harper Voyager via Netgalley for an honest review.
It's not often I find the second book of a series better than the first, but this was definitely the case with Hook, Line, and Sinker. I wasn't sure if I was going to like Fox at first (I'm kind of tired of attractive white men bemoaning about being attractive and how that's only what people think they're good for), but I was pleasantly surprised by how much depth he had. He wasn't just an attractive white man bemoaning on how attractive he was, but had a lot of unresolved self-image issues based on his childhood that really was no fault of his own. Talk about a product of your environment. I ended up liking him so much more than Brendan in the first book, and I felt that he had far more growth than Brendan. I also really liked Hannah, and I liked how we could see her come into her own and gain the confidence she needed to move upward with her job. How she ever liked Sergei, I have no idea because I wanted to punch him in the face numerous times, but I guess that whole tortured artist bullshit doesn't work with me. Character wise, I liked Hannah and Fox far more than I liked Piper and Brendan, even after they realized that they liked each other more than friends.
The whole friends to lover trope is one of my favorites, and this one didn't skimp on the good stuff. We got to see how their friendship built through their texts, their interactions for six months after Hannah left to go back to LA. We saw their relationship grow, and it wasn't this instant love as with Piper and Brendan. Hannah and Fox felt more real than their predecessors. Fox also wasn't a jealous buffoon who didn't think with only his dick half the time. By the time Fox and Hannah revealed that they liked each other and wanted to be with each other, I believed it. It wasn't a slow slow burn, but it was slow enough to really get me invested as a reader.
Tessa has a really bad habit of making her previous characters even worse than in their first book. That whole, "Don't fuck my fiance's sister because it could end up bad for me" with Brendan enraged me so badly, and I don't know why Fox was even friends with him in the first place. Did Brendan make amends? Kind of? I don't know, I stopped caring what he had to say after his selfishness in the beginning. Piper wasn't any better, warning Hannah to stay only as friends with Fox because she "heard" about him and didn't want her sister to end up as another "notch in the bedpost." Not like Hannah was a grown ass woman with her own agency to make up her own mind. Honestly, I was surprised at how little time Piper and Brendan had in this book, but I can't say it wasn't better for it.
For me, this book was several inches better than the first one, and I'm interested to see how it reads when it comes out edited and completed. The epilogue was a bit too schmaltzy for me, but it's a rom-com so I'll allow it.