Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey Book Review

“Every man I date either cheats or can’t commit. Or is already way too committed to his mother. Or PlayStation.” 

About

Author: Tessa Bailey

Genre: New Adult Romance

Series: Hot & Hammered Book 1

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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…

Review

Spoilers Contained Below

To all those hot and hammered,

Eww that sounds wrong!!!! I cringe at myself, but that’s what I get for trying to be clever with my intro.

But you don’t want to hear about me cringing about myself, you want to know about what I thought of this book. And let me be honest, I first bought it because it was making its rounds all over bookstagram and it looked like such a fun read. I mean there was a tall guy with a backward baseball cap and a pretty girl in a pink dress and they were obviously teasing each other in a kiss across a ladder. It kind of gave me Bop to the Top vibes if you’re a High School Musical fanatic.

I didn’t know what to expect when reading this book except, obviously, a romance. I can say that this book was interesting. I think that that there were certain aspects of this book I did enjoy, but some of the storylines and the characters and the romance just didn’t click for me. And this is in no way disrespecting or saying Tessa Bailey is a bad writer because she’s not, this just wasn’t the book for me——you lose some and you win some and reading is subjective.

I absolutely loved Georgie’s character and her spunk, but sometimes her personality confused me because at one moment she would be bold and over the top and then the next moment she would be a bit reserved. There’s nothing wrong with that because people have different personalities that turn off and on given the situations, but the thing that confused me was how she first met Travis in the beginning. There was just something off about it because she just happened to have a key to his house and let herself in and then threw lo mein at his head. Then she kept coming back and cooking him food and, yes, the sentiment was cute, but how did she even know he was home? It was just kind of weird.

And then there was the fact that she had a HUGE childhood crush on him and how throughout the book she has this internal monologue about how obsessive and in love she was with him and how he made her nervous and shy and anxious and all these things, yet she could go to his house all the time and tell him to get off his scum butt. It just didn’t make sense.

In some ways, I didn’t really feel the romance.

I think it’s because Georgie idolized Travis for so long that I think her love just came from that place of idolization. I also feel like Travis didn’t authentically love her because if he did, why didn’t he see it all this time? Why did it have to take years to realize that this girl right in front of him was the one? I feel like he only liked her because she was the only person who told him to stop throwing himself a pity party and get out into the world and to him that was sort of maternal given he didn’t grow up with the best mom. I also feel like he only took interest in her because he literally just liked her body as an older woman.

Bless my young heart because I knew this was a romance book, but I didn’t know until I started to read that it was new adult and you know new adult books, they’re VERY graphic and descriptive with everything.

I guess that’s another reason I truly didn’t enjoy this book as much because I’m not a fan of nasty talk and all that jazz. I shiver and cringe just thinking about what I’ve read. And you bets bet when times got ‘fun,’ I skimmed over those parts because they were a biiiiiittttt toooo mucccchhh for my liking. But there was just sooooooooo much nasty talk on Travis’s and Georgie’s part and it just emphasized to me that physical attraction to me and not the real attraction. Travis kept talking about seeing Georgie in a skirt or a dress and how he would feel down under and how he had to act on it and it was just D-I-S-G-U-S=T-I-N-G. Like I don’t need to KNOW!!! 😅

MY GOSH!!!!

There was that moment when Travis went to the the family dinner and the mom was in on what Travis was feeling in seeing Georgie in a dress——and can we talk about the way everyone in the family was so shocked about her wearing a dress that they were like complement her——so they went to pool house or something to take care of business and I was just like seriously..

So to me it never felt like true love, but more like true lust.

Then there was the fact that it was all fake.

Georgie and Travis are fake dating because they think they can both benefit from what the relationship is perceived as to others. For Travis, being with a simple, humble girl like Georgie would help him land a commentating job after having a baseball injury that shortened his career. For Georgie, being seen with Travis is her way to gain respect as an adult.

This is something I completely relate to with Georgie in how she was the youngest in her family and never seen as the adult. She was never taken seriously by others. And in part, her being a clown symbolized how people thought of her as a joke and they looked down at her for it. They thought her of a kid, not worthy to sit at the big boy table, when really being a clown—-entertaining people—–was what she liked to do and it broke my heart how EVERYONE would talk down to her, especially her family. I wanted to slap her brother, Stephan, each time he pushed aside her comments or advice because he was like “the big kids are talking.” Stephan, adults are just bigger kids and act dumb, so don’t go putting yourself on a pedestal!!! And the fact that all her family members missed out on her brunch was HEARTBREAKING!!! If I was there, I would have gone to her brunch in a heartbeat. But the fact that her brother blatantly forgot about the brunch highlighted how he truly did not care for Georgie and her “silly” family brunch idea and it was disrespectful to what she was trying to do. I mean, she was a gosh darn home owner now and was cooking breakfast for you all and you couldn’t even bother to show up!!! I would have thrown eggs and bacon at their faces!! 😠 It was even sadder than her mom and dad were coming and then Geogie canceled the whole thing because she knew no one else was coming. What was sadder was how upbeat the mom sounded and Georgie felt like they wanted an out to not come anyway. Her family really needed to get some grade A respect slapped into their heads.

I mean just the utter disrespect HURT me!

But back to it being a fake relationship. I felt like the whole aspect of it being fake and the reasons for doing it was kind of one note or not high stakes. It just seemed, again, weird that for in order for him to get a job or for Georgie to gain respect they would fake date. They didn’t need to fake date to get those things. Travis literally could have just stood up for her like he did at any given moment, but not as a boyfriend. And Georgie didn’t need a man to seem respectable. It kind of makes me wonder how being associated with a man makes a woman seem mature or respected. Is it some sort of male egotistical thing? I don’t know, but what I do know is that Georgie didn’t need a man to be mature.

That’s not to say that they didn’t have cute moments that I thought that they were a cute couple. I liked how Travis went to surprise Georgie by going to her house and fixing her fireplace with the branch from her childhood tree. I also liked how he was the only one who showed up to her brunch when she moved into her new house, which is something I’ll talk about more later on. But I have to give him points for showing up for Georgie when no one else did. I also liked how he was there to watch her do her clown act at that one birthday party and she face painted him. There was also the cute moment when Georgie was training for the Mud Run thing and then they ran to the baseball field where she convinced Travis to pick up a baseball bat after all this time. One of the finer things I genuinely loved about their relationship though was how they both seemed to want to be better people from it and it’s that sentiment that made me feel like maybe they were in love because love is supposed to make you stronger. I enjoyed how Travis seemed to let down his guards around Georgie and was honest about his past and his fears. Georgie made him want to make a commitment and to have a life larger than this playboy lifestyle that he had. I loved that for him. Georgie also was better from Travis in learning to stand up for herself when she couldn’t do so. The family dinner moment when Travis stood up for her was the best moment.

Travis stood up for her because the parents dismissed Georgie and what she wanted to say. He definitely clapped back at them and I was here for it. I also liked how he said “I mean no disrespect” to the dad because that showed how he stood up for Georgie in a kind way. But I absolutely was LIVING for how everyone was quiet when Travis spoke up and their mouths were just open. Then the dad was like, “You’re right, I’m sorry,” and then he allowed Georgie to talk. I loved that for her.

I also loved how Georgie was becoming confident in so many ways.

The Just Us League with Bethany and Rose was such a fun female empowered group and as Adelaine Morin would say Girls Supporting Girls. I truly loved how it wasn’t a group to bash guys, but to support each other in their goals. Bethany wanted to start her own business flipping houses because Stephan didn’t want her having her own project, Rose wanted to open her own restaurant, and Georgie wanted to expand her entertainment business. So Georgie went on this whole makeover to wear professional clothing and it reminded me of a Queer Eye episode. It’s the season three episode with the Latina woman who had a cultural business in her hometown and how no one took her seriously as a Latina woman and when the fab five came to make her over, they showed her how to dress professional while still being her. It reminded me of Georgie in how she too was exploring that professionalism and what that style meant. I loved how when people did see her dressed like that, they thought of her maturely. I also liked that moment when news of the Just Us League leaked to the community and all these women were inside one of the girl’s houses and Georgie was the one to calm all of them down. They thought of Georgie as the founder and leader of the Just Us League and it was a proud moment for me to read that after seeing how low people placed her. When she was given a leadership role, you could tell how much it meant to Georgie and how it bolstered her to want to do good by what others saw in her.

Georgie and Travis’s falling out was blown way out of proportion if you ask me. Georgie got all offended and maybe shy that Travis knew she love loved him this whole time and that he thought of her as a silly girl with a crush. I get why Georgie would be hurt and offended because she truly did love him, but it’s not like that was a secret. He knew that even if no one told him. But I think it was the fact he called her a child——the one thing she didn’t want people to see her as. I would be hurt if I was Georgie, but I think she could have been more open to hearing his side of the story instead of wallowing.

The ending was cute though in how Travis went to Bethany’s house and gave him his childhood estate for her to flip because he knew how much Bethany meant to Georgie and he wanted to help. I also liked how he owned up to making a mistake and how he wanted to fix it between Georgie and him.

So launched this whole plan that I was here for.

They were having a Just Us League meeting again, I think at Georgie’s house and downstairs the baseball game that Travis was commenting on was playing. The sister deliberately told Georgie to go watch it and lo and behold Travis is on. I found it cute how the boy that delivered pizza was there and so was the whole hometown high school baseball team because Travis decided to put his efforts into giving back to his community even though he couldn’t’ play baseball professionally. But that’s not what made the moment cute. It was the gosh darn proposal.

THE PROPOSAL!

If you ask me, it was a pretty fast proposal, but I guess he really was cemented in his feelings. Good for him.

I loved the whole declaration on TV and how Georgie wanted to go see him to accept the proposal and Stephan drove her. Can we talk about how Stephan was pretty cool as an older brother for being slightly okay with Travis and Georgie dating. Stephan and Travis were childhood best friends and Travis had a reputation. It was funny whenever Stephan and Travis were around each other and Georgie was there because Travis wasn’t in the cleanest headspace. I also liked the fact that Travis told Stephan that he was dating Georgie before they officially came out because it meant that Travis had respect for their friendship and wanted to get that awkwardness out the way. If I were Stephan, I would have been like no way José are you getting anywhere near my sister. I really expected him to punch Travis out of anger, but he was good about not doing so. Stephan was a bit protective, but what bother isn’t towards their little sister. But I liked how he was the one to help Georgie meet Travis half-way in knowing that his best friend truly did love her and that his sister loved him—–he put his own differences aside for the happiness of the people he loved. I loved that.

It was acute moment when they met on the freeway and she said yes to his proposal. Something straight out of a movie.

So there were parts I enjoyed, some parts I didn’t. But I’m a sucker for a happy ending.

The only thing I’m left wondering is why the book was called Fix Her Up? Didn’t they both fix each other up to be better people? I don’t know, but the title seems a little one sided, and it wasn’t so much about fixing things up. But it doesn’t matter because it was a clever title in some ways.

If you read this book, what was your favorite or least favorite part? What’s your favorite sport? Are you the youngest one in your family and do you receive treatment like Georgie did (in being talked down to or not taken seriously)? Let me know below int eh comments as I love hearing from you all.

I hope you have a beautiful day whenever and wherever you’re reading this.

And as always, with love,

Rating

3.4 Full Bloom Flowers

Characters: Georgie is someone every young person can relate to and Travis is someone every parent hopes doesn’t marry their innocent daughter. But he’s proof that people can change and people change each other

Plot: Some aspects of the plot didn’t make sense or fully click with me, but the story flowed in a way you could understand it. It also had really enjoyable moments.

Writing: My first Tessa Bailey book and one thing I learned is she likes to be VERY descriptive to the adult audience 😉

Romance: The romance was okay. I felt like there was a lot of lust there, but also some parts that made you feel like they were in love. I don’t know, didn’t fully like the romance, but didn’t dislike it either.