It Happened One Summer

I think Piper Bellinger is my new favorite character in rom-com literature. It's because [a:Tessa Bailey 6953499 Tessa Bailey https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1634304355p2/6953499.jpg] has written a lovable airhead better than anyone. It's not Piper's fault that she's real world clueless. Her sheltered upbringing has left her great at selfies, makeup, and partying, but nothing that would prepare her to leave her natural habitat, L.A., for an obscure fishing village in the Pacific Northwest. However, once she is banished there, her lovable look at life follows her, as does her more pragmatic sister. In hopes of being taught a lessons, her stepfather has sent her to the village where her real father lived before his untimely death. Worse yet, she has been sent there with very little in the way of funds. Enter a fishing captain who is just as clueless about social media as Piper is about fishing boats. Opposites don't attract in this case. At least not immediately. I think my favorite part of the book was when Piper went to dinner, necessitated by a cooking mishap, with the aforementioned captain of fishing boat, Brendan Taggart. He asked Piper to explain why she had said she was spending the next three months in Westport.“Why exactly are you in Westport? . . . You said three months. That's a pretty specific amount of time.”Beneath the table, her leg began to jiggle. “It's kind of an awkward story.”“Do you need a beer before telling it?”Her lips twitched. “No.” She closed her eyes and shivered. “It's more than awkward. It's humiliating. I don't know if I should give you that ammunition.” [Note: Until this point, there interaction has been adversarial.]Man, he'd really been a bastard. “I won't use it against you, Piper.”She speared him with those baby blues and seemed satisfied with whatever she saw. “Okay, just keep an open mind.” She blew out a breath. “I had a bad breakup. A public one. And I didn't want to be labeled social media pathetic, right? So I mass texted hundreds of people and broke us into the rooftop pool at the Mondrian [a hotel]. It got out of control. Like, police helicopter and fireworks and nudity out of control. So I got arrested and nearly cost my stepfather the production money for his next film. He sent me here with barely any money to teach me a lesson. . . . and force me into being self-sufficient. Hannah [her sister] wouldn't let me come alone.”Brendan's fork had been suspended in the air for a good minute. He tried to piece it all together, but everything about this world she described was so far from his, it almost sounded like make-believe. “When was this?”“A few weeks ago,” she said on an exhale. “Wow, it sounds worse all strung together like that.”Let me just admit, as a writer myself, I wish I had written that. Or the whole book for that matter.I highly recommend you check out this book.