Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey
Published: January 14, 2020
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 10 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 hippie. 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.
So I’ve come to the conclusion that any book that revolves around marriage and the struggles of communication in marriage really hit home with me. When I read The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams I had some of the same feelings as I did reading this. Just like that book, this one is about Rosie and Dominic and how their breakdowns in communication is breaking down their relationship. When Rosie movies out to live with Bethany Castle and asks Dominic to go to marriage counseling is when Dom first even realizes that Rosie was unhappy in the first place.
I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews for this book, and I’m not saying that this book was in any means flawless, but it was so entertaining to read and really engrossed me, and made me feel which is why I’m giving it such a high review. Tessa Bailey I feel like just knows how to write Romance / Contemporary Romance so well. I literally binged this, in a day.
Rosie is such a lovable character, and as an aspiring baker, seeing her ambition and drive to open up her own restaurant, it was a really big connecting factor between myself and her. I love a good high school sweethearts story, and I understand how after ten years (I’m at four years) of marriage, things can become so routine that you look up one day and your partner isn’t exactly the same person as before. We’re all evolving and changing and growing each day, and I loved that this theme was explored. I think it’s a lot more common in long term relationships than a lot of people know.
I did feel a little let down by the complete non-exploration of Dominic. I noticed that in this book compared to Fix Her Up, there was little to no exploration of the background of the male lead. In Fix Her Up, Travis’ past was talked about more than in here. And I felt like Dom had so much potential to be really something great underneath. He’s a vet, like what was that like, is that some of the reasons he’s so shut down in the relationship outside of just being a “quiet guy”. I felt like he was really given the short end of the stick in this book.
But other than that one little hiccup, man this book was really good! I liked it a lot, the pacing was great, like I said Rosie is probably my favorite so far between this book and the last one, and that spice level is….wowee. Overall, I feel like I’m having great luck with Romance books lately so again, really entertaining, kept me engaged, I really felt for the couple and my heart was in it. I’d recommend you pick this up.
4/5 Stars
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