Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey

Blurb: 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: Fix Her Up is your typical Tessa Bailey novel. Amazing from start to finish. Her style of writing just pulls you in from that first sentence and hypnotizes you until the next thing you know it's over and you haven't even realized that hours have passed. At least, that's what happened to me.

Fix Her Up gives us the fan favorite fake-dating trope and Bailey creates some lovable characters whose banter is top notch and whose emotions pour of the page and into your goddamn soul. Every time I read one of her books I think 'there's no way she can top this' and then she does.

This is marketed as a romantic comedy--if you follow my reviews you know I'm not a huge fan--but Fix Her Up doesn't read like a romantic comedy per se. It's not overly cheesy, the characters are solidly built, and the story is beautifully spun. Not to mention the sex is insane. Georgie likes to be controlled (in an rather innocent manner, no BDSM here) and there's enough dirty-talk to make a seasoned romance reader blush. Yum.

The secondary characters--you'll know which ones will be focused on in later books--have some stories that will make you eager to pick up the remainder of the series. Too bad this one isn't out yet because I'm itching for the next!

Book is out June 2019, so you have plenty of time to get pre-order this beauty.