It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey

It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)

It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey

Bellinger Sisters #1

Published July 13th 2021 by Avon

397 Pages

Goodreads Summary: 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. 

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.

Review: When I first started reading It Happened One Summer, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to be able to make it all the way through the book. Piper is your stereotypical shallow Hollywood girl who is famous for being the stepdaughter of somebody famous and becoming a social media star. It opens with her being dumped by the guy she had been dating who was supposedly her longest relationship which had lasted all of 3 weeks. To blow off steam and repair the image of her begging not to be dumped, she breaks into a hotel pool and throws a raging party that gets busted by the cops. Her stepfather decides enough is enough and sends her north to the coastal WA fishing town where her biological father was from and she had spent the first few years of her life. I have a hard time reading and enjoying books where the main character is so far towards this direction but kept reading in the hopes that she would have some character growth once she got to WA and out of the Hollywood bubble

Enter Brendan… rugged fishing captain who finds Piper insanely gorgeous but incredibly naive and shallow. When they first meet you get a little enemies to lovers vibe, which I love, so I started getting more into it. As Piper and her sister Hannah settle into their new lives in Westport, the cast of characters they encounter have that classic Stars Hollow-esque charm… quirky and strange but lovable and would do anything for their community. The more Piper gets out there with her fellow townspeople, including Brendan, the more she begins to realize that the Hollywood bubble may not be all that she thought it was.

By the time the book was nearing the end, I was really rooting for Piper and had completely changed my view on her as a character. Overall I ended up really enjoying this book and am now looking forward to reading the sequel that follows Piper’s sister Hannah, and Brendan’s best friend and fellow fisherman, Fox. If you loved The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker and watching Schitt’s Creek, then this is the book for you.

4 Stars

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

4 thoughts on “It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey

  1. Pingback: Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey | The Worn Bookmark

Leave a comment