It Happened One Summer - Tessa Bailey

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. (link)

Review: 4/5

As you can tell from my Pumpkin Spice Café review, I’m not typically a small town romance kind of gal. However, I found something kind of endearing with the Paris Hilton-esque archetype falling in love with the burley, strong, quiet sailor. There’s something about a small New England town with sailors and crab fishing, or whatever the hell they were doing. I read a lot of romance books surrounding the time-frame of this book, however I wasn’t disappointed with it! Would I rate it 10 out of 10 and recommend it to every single person I know? No. But there was something about the way that the main character didn’t want to move to the small town and really kind of resented her stepdad for making her earn her way; I thought that was pretty different from the other small town stories I’ve read. I love a story about women proving men wrong, and I especially loved that no one believes that these two young rich girls (who were basically born into a stepdad that could pay for anything for them) could bring this community's heartbeat back.

I find it totally unrealistic that all of the community members would take these two girls in with open arms and encourage them to fix up this community heart line that they call the bar (that has been operating without a liquor license, by the way). I think people often don’t want people coming into their small town and ruining the vibe by bringing their different, big city energy in, however I don’t have much experience in a welcoming small-town… awkward.

I also thought the chemistry between Piper and Brendan was really believable for me and easy for me to encourage. I don’t love the overly endearing, overly in love -very-quickly, slight love-bombing trope because it’s really hard to differentiate between a healthy and true soulmate and love-bombing doom. Plus, I typically don’t like blonde male leads because that’s not who I’m attracted to in real life. Typically, I think blonde men are evil and stuck up, just from my minor traumatic ex-boyfriends, unless it’s Glenn Powell. If they make a screen adaptation of this book, Brendan needs to be Glenn Powell and there’s no way I’m budging on that. There is no other lovable, Hollywood, white blonde man with nice teeth (veneers?) who could most likely pull off a beanie I’d like to see in this role. I'm looking at the cover, why is Brendan brunette? I explicitly remember him as blond, so I'm just going to continue. I just wouldn’t have it if they came out with a different main male cast for this movie; just know that I will put all of the burley characteristics aside for my main man. Glenn, If you somehow find this, feel free to drop a comment and I will reach out because I love you and I’m going to see Twisters this week by the way. I could be an amazing and loving dog-mom to Brisket.

Back from my very public yearning moment, I thought this book was cute. I thought it was a great palate cleanser after reading a really meaningful and deep story about queer hardships. None of this had that, and none of that had this, so it was perfect because there was no relation whatsoever.

I think I liked this book more than a lot of other small town romances because it was a plot point that I’m not really familiar with. AND I’m finding out that it was based off Schitt’s Creek, so no wonder I adored it. The whole monsoon/hurricane/flooding moment is something that is not something that I’m familiar with in reading, and I’m barely familiar with it in shows and movies. The only kind of boat-danger kind of stories that I am familiar with mainly focuses around World War II, and if you didn’t know this book is not centered in World War II. So there was this circumstance of a break up that was out of their control, because normally in the small town books the third act break up is because someone gets in over their head, or because rumors start, or because someone else wants to mess it up, yadda yadda yadda. I like the idea of the characters being out of control and letting mother nature take its course. Of course in my pure romantic, Venus ruled by Virgo heart, it was easy for me to root for these lovebirds. He was just doing his job but he missed Piper, and it was old-school lack of technology, and she was doing her job of being faithful to him, and realizing that community takes a lot more than materialistic things she is familiar with.

I think if I remember correctly, there is a part near the end of the book where Piper goes home and she goes back to her old lifestyle of partying, but she realizes that’s not where she belongs anymore. Then there’s the moment that he comes to find her in her4 big city and gives up on his small town life to be able to be with her, even if it’s in this community that he knows he doesn’t fit in with. I’m not normally for someone changing themselves to be with their love, but I thought this sentiment was cute in this context, because you knew that they cared about each other, and of course you knew it would work out in a way that fit them both well.

So anyways, with a romcom like this, I kind of get that “maybe they won’t be together but they also know that they should be together.” Will they, won’t they? But you know they will. So duh, a romcom soundtrack is the only thing that would fit it best, and I got a sprinkle a little bit of Noah Kahan in there, because he only ever talks about being from the northeast. No brainer!

Spotify: LINK