Book Review: The Au Pair Affair

Tessa Bailey books are always fun reads. Earlier this year I read Fangirl Down, the first book in her Big Shots series of sports romcoms and loved it. In Fangirl Down readers are introduced to the best friends of the main characters Josephine and Wells – Tallulah Aydin and Burgess “Sir Savage” Abraham. They are the main characters in The Au Pair Affair.

Tallulah is a marine biologist who has spent the last few years traveling from place to place to study the animals. Burgess is a pro hockey player and father to a 12 year old daughter, Lissa. In Fangirl Down, Burgess and Tallulah met for the first time and sparks were flying. It comes up that Burgess needs an au pair for his daughter. Tallulah just so happens to be starting her grad program at a college in Boston where Burgess and Lissa live and could use the extra income. Plus she and Lissa hit it off when they met. It seems like a great idea, except for the fact that Tallulah and Burgess are wildly attracted to each other. Can Tallulah be the live-in nanny and keep things professional with Burgess?

I really liked both Tallulah and Burgess, but for some reason the chemistry just didn’t hit for me. I liked the storyline and premise but it fell a little short for me and it’s hard for me to pinpoint why. It could just be a chemistry thing. Part of it might be because you’d think with the nanny/employer/forbidden love situation that it’d be a little more of a slow burn which would make the tension really good but it wasn’t really drawn out so maybe that’s where I was feeling the lack of chemistry. I will say that spice was really good and those scenes had really good tension and build up.

Overall, I liked the book but didn’t absolutely love it. It was between a 3.5-4 star for me. New characters were introduced in this one, Chloe and Sig, and I thought they were really fun minor characters so I’m excited to read their book when it comes out this winter!

Read this if you want a spicy sports romcom with the single dad, forbidden love, age gap and forced proximity tropes.

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