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Book Blurb:
Tallulah is smart, vivacious, and studying to be a marine biologist. She’s also twenty-six and broke. So when Burgess, a battle-scarred hockey veteran and newly single dad, offers her a job as his live-in nanny, she jumps at the opportunity to get paid while living in a super fancy neighborhood and being around Lissa, his cool but introverted tween.
Her tween charge isn’t the only one who could use some help fitting in, though. According to…well, everyone except Burgess, he needs to get back on the dating scene, and adventurous Tallulah is just the girl to show him how. But as boundaries are slowly crossed and Burgess finds himself pulled between his daughter, who wants her parents back together, and his insane chemistry with Tallulah, a huge rift is formed, and Tallulah does the “right” thing—breaks her own heart and walks away.
Though Burgess knows it’s for the best—he’s too jaded, with too much baggage—a chance meeting, and a new push from his daughter, forces him to put everything on the line and fight to prove he learned his lessons well and is worthy of a happily ever after with Tallulah.
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I haven’t met a Tessa Bailey romance that I haven’t loved yet - and add in the fact that this was a hockey romance - and I pretty much loved Tallulah and Burgess right from the very beginning.
One of my absolute favorite parts of this romance was Burgess’s journey as an aging hockey star. At the ripe old age of 37, Burgess no longer felt like he was at peak performance on the ice and his rookie teammates were a constant reminder of that. Burgess was grumpy, feeling like his best days of hockey stardom and wedded bliss were behind him. It was all he could do to keep up with his younger teammates on the ice and give his daughter the love and attention she needed at home.
Enter Tallulah. Often alone by choice, Tallulah took the au pair position as a means to get by; getting to spend time with Lissa was just a bonus. And growing closer to Lissa’s burly and surly father? He was as unplanned as Tallulah’s planting roots in Boston.
I loved this age gap romance, even though I had to keep reminding myself that Burgess wasn’t that old; some of the comments he made about himself made me picture him a lot older than his 30s. Burgess and Tallulah’s growing relationship was sweet and spicy, and I loved how Tallulah fit into Burgess and Lissa’s lives. The writing was standard Tessa Bailey: it was easy to escape into and easy to picture each scene as it unfolded. I would’ve loved more time on the ice with Burgess, but it was fun to see Tallulah falling in love with the game as she was falling in love with Burgess. The Au Pair Affair was a perfect combination of age gap and hockey romance, paired with the easy-to-love writing of Tessa Bailey.
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I haven’t met a Tessa Bailey romance that I haven’t loved yet - and add in the fact that this was a hockey romance - and I pretty much loved Tallulah and Burgess right from the very beginning.