“Bottom line, he knew in his bones that in fifty years, he'd still want to look at her face.”

This book was adorable! Natalie is a down on her luck Napa Heiress who enters into a marriage of convenience with August, a former Navy SEAL who is trying (and failing) to run his own winery. Their arrangement is mutually beneficial, except that they don't exactly get along. So much witty banter in this one! Natalie and August are constantly bickering, but as the reader you know that's because of ~simmering feelings~ underneath the surface.

This book was absolutely PERFECT and I devoured it whole. I couldn't stop reading after I picked it up. I am so happy this one was so good because the first one sucked.

You know how sometimes books just hit those sweet spots and even though you realize the book probably isn't even that special, for some reason it just really, really hits? That's what this book was for me.

August Cates. August MF Cates. That's all I have to say. Ex SEAL, rocking a nine incher, his love for his wife the size of the universe. He was a man OBSESSED and I was here for all of it. I loved the way they argued, the way the love grew. His past, his feelings. I do wish we had seen more of him grappling with Sam's passing (we didn't even get the full story, which I consider a missed opportunity.) Perhaps it was for the best. I don't think it would be possible to love August Cates any more than I do. The way he started to panic when Natalie went in the cave? The way he had every instinct to protect her? THE WAY HE DANCED WITH HER DAUGHTER AT HER RECITAL? DADDY AUGUST CATES!!!!

And Natalie was the FMC that Secretly Yours desperately needed. She didn't lack in any department. She was August's equal 100%, and I loved her character wholly. The two of them together? God, the fireworks. I couldn't get enough.

This was a big improvement from Secretly Yours (I gave a 3/5.)

This story was steamy and so funny. Their banter had me laughing and it was such a good enemies to lovers. I was highlighting so many quotes from this man and it's become one of my new favorite books. I was a little hesitant given my reading experience with book 1, but I was truly blown away and had so much fun with this one.

A fun enemies to lovers troupe that leaves on fanning themselves! Set in beautiful Napa, and deeply entrenched in the wine business, Natalie and August (by the way - fabulous name for this character) agree to help each other out and set aside differences. If only things were that easy. She has family responsibilities to live up to, and is her own worst enemy in many instances. He is a former SEAL that is trying to honor his fallen brother. This one is just plain fun. Thanks to NetGalley for the read.

Received an ARC from NetGalley and also purchased my own copy.

Oh I really really liked these two book by our Tessa. After meeting Natalie (and August briefly) in the first book, I couldn't wait to see what was in store for them and I was not disappointed. Both of them are struggling with self-esteem issues, but their animosity/chemistry is off the charts. When an opportunity presents itself that will help them both, they jump in - no matter how foolish it seems. So what if it's a farce of a marriage? Except...it's not. August has been head over heels since first meeting Natalie and just can't get out of his own way. Natalie takes a smidge longer to come around...but not much. What follows is sweet and spicy and all kinds of fun. We do get a touch of heartbreak...but it's so delightfully resolved that you have to love it. And...as with the Bellinger sisters...we got an epilogue that made my heart very happy.

I am a Tessa Bailey fan through and through - if she writes a book, I'm gonna read it. Naturally, when the A Vine Mess series was announced, I was sliding into Avon's DMs HARD. Unfortunately Yours is a marriage of convenience, dual POV, enemies to lovers romance - aka it hits a lot of my favorite tropes. It also ended up being my favorite in the duology - August and Natalie just hit different. 
 
I really loved the dual POV in this book - it helped show how much of a simp August was for Natalie. From day one, he was infatuated with Natalie, but he loved to go toe to toe with her. On the flip side, Natalie really did think they were enemies to start with. Even when they were going head to head, their chemistry was insane. Their banter? Excellent (genuinely laughed out loud a few times). Their tension? Unreal. Overall, this was a super fun, perfect for the summer rom com - best paired with a glass of good wine.

Okay i loved this! I wasn’t a huge fan of the first in this series so i was apprehensive going into this one, but it didn’t disappoint!
The marriage of convenience trope almost always works for me and this was just perfect. He was lovesick from the beginning and i loved it. This had what tessa bailey is best at, humor, dirty talk and sexy sexy scenes. I loved Augusts total golden retriever energy and her more grumpy cat energy.
This was a really fun romance!

Yummy, Yummy, Yummy! No wonder Tessa Bailey has been called the “Michelangelo of dirty talk,” by Entertainment Weekly. It’s super steamy and full of so much heart, you might burst.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

I love Tessa Bailey. As usual, great spice, great banter, dialogue, character growth and relationship development as people.
The hero really threw this off for me. He was supposed to be ex navy seal and just came across very silly for my tastes. I struggled to picture him right from the start and it just went downhill with him. He did have some good moments where I felt he was humanized and also made into a real hero. I did love them as a couple. One thing I’ll say, this book had some really beautiful and realistic portrayals of dealing with relationship issues. The growth they had when learning to communicate and have true intimacy was so great.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book is the ultimate deploymentment of the Fake Marriage trope, and I have some mixed feelings about it. The relationship is charming, but the story is somewhat ridiculous. Natalie is the heiress of a vineyard and winery family who has possibly the most uncaring parents I have ever seen in a book. August is a winemaker who somehow has decided to buy a winery and make wine despite having no experience or money--I really had trouble understanding how that came about. Didn't he think it would be a good idea to maybe, I don't know, work for another winery for a little while and learn some stuff? But no, apparently he decided to jump right in a start a winery without really seeming to even like wine, let alone know anything about it. My next question is, who is actually picking these grapes? Cultivating the vines? It seems to be a solo operation. Anyway, these are the things I think about when I'm not getting distracted by the developing relationship and the very spicy bits. Giving this one 3.75 stars and rounding up.

So, Tessa Bailey can basically do no wrong. August Cates is literal book bf material and this was by far, one of my absolute favorite books of hers!

Don’t hesitate- get this book!

4 stars

You can read all of my reviews at Nerd Girl Loves Books.

I really enjoyed this funny, flirty contemporary romance set in Napa Valley. Natalie loses her finance job in NYC and her fiance. She returns home to the family vineyard to lick her wounds. There she drowns her sorrows in cabernet and makes plans to start a new business. She is smart, capable, and knows her own mind. I liked her ability to own her mistakes, but not let them define her.

August is an ex Navy Seal who bought a vineyard in honor of his best friend Sam who died in action. It was always Sam's dream to own a winery, but August doesn't know the first thing about making wine and is failing miserably. August is honorable, loyal, protective, and is not afraid to show his feelings. He falls first for Natalie which is swoon-worthy in and of itself. Add in a sexy southern drawl and he's the perfect book boyfriend.

Natalie and August have crossed paths a few times, with each meeting ending in an argument. But, Natalie can't access her inheritance unless she gets married, and since no bank will loan money to August, she proposes a quickie marriage of convenience. She gets her inheritance, and the credence of his marriage to Natalie gets August the bank loan he needs to save his vineyard from going under. But, is it possible this fake marriage turns real? If it's up to August, the answer is "hell yeah".

One of my favorite things about the book is that the couple actually talk with each other, including talking about their feelings!! What?! (Want me to close a book and throw it against the wall? Include the "miscommunication trope" as a plot device. It drives me crazy and is lazy writing. My review of the book is guaranteed to lose a star for that alone. Ok. Here endeth my rant.) Natalie's brother Julian and his girlfriend Hallie (the couple in the first book Secretly Yours ) make a brief appearance in the book.

I loved all the witty, sexy banter between the couple and the spicy scenes are steamy. I listened to the audio of the book and the narrator's did a great job. This is a quick and easy read that is a great way to spend an afternoon.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager. All opinions are my own.

Natalie Vos has lost her high-powered finance job, has been dumped by her fiancé, and has come home to her family’s Napa Valley vineyard to regroup and drink lots of wine in the hopes of forgetting about what a mess her life has become. She is hoping to gain access to her trust fund in order to launch her own company, but her father has established an outrageous condition that she will have to work around: she needs to be married before she can access her trust fund. Not only does she need to be married, but the marriage needs to be real enough to convince the humorless bank manager that she is really and truly in love and therefore deserves access to her money.

August Cates, former Navy SEAL, new vineyard owner, cannot make a decent bottle of wine to save his life. He is living out the dream of his late best friend and former fellow SEAL in order to honor Sam’s memory, but things aren’t going well. If August doesn’t figure out a way to get more money in order to keep trying, he is going to have to do the unthinkable: admit defeat and get out of the wine making business.

A marriage of convenience would help them both out. Natalie would gain access to her trust fund and August would be able to secure a bank loan using the respectable Vos family name and connections. After a few weeks of pretending to be married and securing their respective funds, they could have a pretend fight, get a divorce, and never have to see each other again. Right? Wrong. Tessa Bailey is not about to let that happen.

Having been introduced to Natalie and August in Secretly Yours, I was excited to read their story next. There were definitely some cringy moments as well as times when I wanted to throttle the main characters for their terrible decisions, but Natalie and August were both so relatable and vulnerable, with banter and chemistry to spare, that it was hard not to root for the two of them.

Recommended for adults. Thanks to NetGalley and Avon Books for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this Enemies-to-Lovers/Fake Relationship romance. Throw in a ridiculous inheritance stipulation and I am ALL IN, bitches.

Natalie had such a great backstory, filled with mistakes that she owns and the want to mend her family relationships and become useful to her family vineyard. And I just fell in love with August (and his asshole cat). He is so earnest and loyal, but so likable and seriously hilarious. These two have insane chemistry that basically overheated my kindle.

And speaking of heat, it's a Tessa Bailey book so BUCKLE UP. There are seriously steamy scenes, but that also have emotional meaning within the framework of this story.

By the end of UNFORTUNATELY YOURS I thought I might actually perish if Natalie and August didn't get together and I love it when I feel that way about a romance. It's the mark of truly good writing.

Please pick up UNFORTUNATELY YOURS. It gets a very enthusiastic 5-STARS from me!

The perfect enemies to lovers with a marriage of convenience. It is Tessa Bailey at her best and I highly recommend it for all library collections!

4/4.5 stars for this one.

This felt more like the Tessa Bailey books I know and love. It was a fun read with antagonistic characters that actually were attracted to each other, but were also opposites. It was spicy and cute and fun.

My only issue is that problems were not fully flushed out. August’s promise to Sam? I felt like that wasn’t fully explored.


Slight spoilers below:

Natalie feeling like her family shut her out and her issues with her mom was just resolved in a paragraph. Like oops sorry! All fixed. At the end. And then August and Natalie hid from each other that they didn’t actually have to get married to get what they needed. And again resolved in one paragraph of oops we both hid that from each other! Oh well!

It was a quick and fun read though and I love all Tessa Bailey. That only docked half a star from my perspective so I’m still happy and will continue to auto buy and auto read. 🖤🖤

This book was a really fun, quick read! The marriage of convenience trope was written incredibly well. I really enjoyed the chemistry between Natalie and August. The banter and fighting was so fun and perfect to build that tension. Thank you Tessa for writing a couple that actually communicates their feelings after a fight and don’t just storm off into the other room! Probably my favorite scene in the entire book.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC to review!

DNF @ 43%. For a romance with a fun setup / premise, this book DRAGGED. Also, August as a character was a chaotic mess. Could not get invested. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free advance copy.

I gotta be honest—after the first book in this series, I didn’t have super high hopes for this one (even though Natalie and August’s chemistry nearly eclipsed Hallie and Julian’s in their story). I was delightfully surprised, though! Their banter was better, their sexual tension was better, their attraction to one another was more palpable and believable, and the story was much more streamlined with a better balance of comedy and emotional gravitas.

There was a good balance of scathing repartee and sexual tension in the beginning; they unintentionally hit each other’s sore spots and genuinely show remorse when they do. They’re both flawed (Natalie is a bit self-absorbed; August is a bit crass and insensitive and clueless; they’re both too stubborn for their own good), but they both have attractive (non-physical) qualities: Natalie is ambitious and caring; August is honorable and outgoing; they both stick up for heir own beliefs and for their loved ones.

I didn’t love how August handled keeping his secret from Natalie—it seemed downright manipulative, especially considering how vulnerable she’d been being open with him about her past hurts and betrayals. And then everything got resolved WAY too quickly, considering all the buildup it got throughout the book (like, it seemed with all the agonizing over this issue that it was being set up to be the main conflict that would cause the third-act breakup, but it seemed almost like an afterthought when Natalie offered her own confession, which really didn’t seem like that big of an issue in comparison). It made for a very anticlimactic resolution of the story. And there were some excessive and/or far-reaching metaphors and clichés, as well as way too many instances of Natalie’s “kaleidoscopic” features (wtf?).

But otherwise, this was a very enjoyable little rom-com. I loved how gooey and soft and sentimental August was on the inside, crying as Natalie walked down the aisle and whenever he visited Sam’s grave. For a clueless himbo type, August was super sweet. And of course, I loved his open and shameless obsession with Natalie. And the spice was HOT. Also, Menace the cat was adorable.

Unfortunately Yours appears to be the last of the series since everything wrapped up so cleanly in the epilogue. This was such a charming and sexy way to end the duology!

Overall rating: 3.75 stars
Spice level: 3/5

** I received this book as an ARC through NetGalley**

Unfortunately Yours was a really good follow up to Secretly Yours by Tessa Bailey. Book 2 follows August, an ex navy SEAL who has started a failing wine business and Natalie, a wine heiress and recent out-casted NY financial investor. The bants between these two enemies was sooo good and the transition from enemies to lovers was well done! Their marriage of convenience made sense within the book and I enjoyed reading their love story. August also has some pretty great dirty talk and I am all here for that! I enjoy Tessa's writing and was pulled into the story right off the bat! I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys enemies to lovers, Navy Seals, and smutty scenes with lots of dirty talk!!

Spice rating: 3.8/5
Overall rating: 8/10