Score: 3/5 Bookmarks

Steam Rating: 🍆🍆🍆🍆/5

Warning: Not Safe for Work!

Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey is the second book in the ‘Hot and Hammered’ series (check out the first book Fix Her up). Rosie and Dominic Vega seem like the perfect couple: high school sweethearts, best friends, madly in love. At least they used to be. Now they never talk, and Rosie is ready to call it all quits. But can they find their way back to themselves, and each other?

The first book was okay-ish, but I was excited that this second book was going to be about Rosie, who plays a supporting role in the first book and who was one of the only characters I really liked.

She continued to be my favorite character in Love Her or Lose Her, although I actively disliked everyone else in the book, particularly Rosie’s husband, Dominic. He’s chauvinistic and controlling, and frankly I couldn’t stand him. AND he called her ‘Honey Girl’ constantly which made me cringe / dry heave out loud every…single…time.

In Fix Her Up the male lead, Travis, also called the female lead, Georgie, ‘Baby Girl’ constantly which had the same effect on my gag reflex, but somehow ‘Honey Girl’ seems even worse.

And while this book had a decent amount of steam (four eggplants, which is on the higher side) and which I’m definitely not opposed to — the language was SO cringeworthy. And after reading quite a few steamy, but tasteful and modern, romances lately it was disappointing to find this book full of phrases like ‘her weeping flesh’, ‘blood trickling down his back, thanks to her nails’, ‘thick column of flesh’, and ‘the walls of her c*nt’. I mean…gross. In short, there may have been a lot of steamy content, but the language was so very, very un-sexy.

The only phrase that did make me chuckle was ‘he was packing enough wood to build a deck’, lol.

It wasn’t a completely horrible book, and I did make it all the way through. But with un-likeable characters and all the dry-heaving it caused me I wasn’t going to give it more than two and a half stars…in the end I rounded up to three because I found the marriage counselor amusing, if not fairly predictable.

I listened to this one as an audiobook and while I enjoyed Charlotte North’s narration of the female roles, the voice that she put on for Dominic was atrocious — so maybe skip the audio and go for a physical copy if you’d like to give this book a shot. You can grab a copy by clicking the button below.

Also, it looks like there will be a third book in the series, as there were a few throw-away lines towards the end of this one about Georgie’s sister / Rosie’s friend and a cowboy-hat-wearing guy the other men work with. Not sure if I’ll give this author a third chance though…I guess we’ll see.

Synopsis:

Rosie and Dominic Vega are the perfect couple: high school sweethearts, best friends, madly in love. Well, they used to be anyway. Now Rosie’s lucky to get a caveman grunt from the ex-soldier every time she walks in the door. Dom is faithful and a great provider, but the man she fell in love with ten years ago is nowhere to be found. When her girlfriends encourage Rosie to demand more out of life and pursue her dream of opening a restaurant, she decides to demand more out of love, too. Three words: marriage boot camp.

Never in a million years did Rosie believe her stoic, too-manly-to-emote husband would actually agree to relationship rehab with a weed-smoking hippy. Dom talking about feelings? Sitting on pillows? Communing with nature? Learning love languages? Nope. But to her surprise, he’s all in, and it forces her to admit her own role in their cracked foundation. As they complete one ridiculous—yet surprisingly helpful—assignment after another, their remodeled relationship gets stronger than ever. Except just as they’re getting back on track, Rosie discovers Dom has a secret... and it could demolish everything.