Secretly Yours (A Vine Mess #1)
Tessa Bailey
Rated: 3.35 of 5 stars
3.35
· Steam/Spice level: 4 of 5
Explicit open door [?]
· 91 ratings · Published: 07 Feb 2023
Hallie Welch fell hard for Julian Vos at fourteen, after they almost kissed in the dark vineyards of his family's winery. Now the prodigal hottie has returned to their small town. When Hallie is hired to revamp the gardens on the Vos estate, she wonders if she'll finally get that smooch. But the grumpy professor isn't the teenager she remembers and their polar opposite personalities clash spectacularly. One wine-fueled girls' night later, Hallie can't shake the sense that she did something reckless--and then she remembers the drunken secret admirer letter she left for Julian. Oh shit.
On sabbatical from his ivy league job, Julian plans to write a novel. But having Hallie gardening right outside his window is the ultimate distraction. She's eccentric, chronically late, often literally covered in dirt--and so unbelievably beautiful, he can't focus on anything else. Until he finds an anonymous letter sent by a woman from his past. Even as Julian wonders about this admirer, he's sucked further into Hallie's orbit. Like the flowers she plants all over town, Hallie is a burst of color in Julian's gray-scale life. For a man who irons his socks and runs on tight schedules, her sunny chaotic energy makes zero sense. But there's something so familiar about her... and her very presence is turning his world upside down.
Tagged as:
- grumpy & sunshine 14
- funny 13
- contemporary 13
- new adult 10
- friends to lovers 9
- forced proximity 6
- small town 6
- cheerful/happy heroine 6
- curvy heroine 6
- virgin heroine 6
- dual pov 5
- nerdy hero 5
- grumpy/cold hero 5
- possessive hero 4
- height difference 3
- teacher/coach hero 3
- sassy heroine 3
- rich hero 3
- neurodivergent mc 3
- young adult 2
- tortured hero 2
- third person pov 2
- sweet/gentle heroine 2
- shy hero 2
- class difference 1
- workplace/office 1
- slow burn 1
- Add topics
- content warnings
- mental illness 2
- ableism 2
- substance abuse 1
romance tags
The 'A Vine Mess' series
166 ratings 3.66 ·
height-difference · contemporary · substance abuse · grumpy sunshine · small town · class difference · humor · explicit-open-door · cold hero · independent heroine · strong heroine · curvy heroine · tortured hero · young adult · sassy heroine · sweet heroine · slow burn · forced proximity · office · third-person-pov
A Vine Mess reading order and complete book list ❯