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the_cover_contessa 's review for:

Merry Ever After by Tessa Bailey
3.0
funny hopeful fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I'm a big Tessa Bailey fan. I love her characters and their relationships and ups and down.
This novella was sweet but I felt like it went zero to sixty in 1.2 seconds without much build up. 
While I enjoyed the back and forth between Evie and Luke, I kind of needed more. I'm not saying I don't believe in love or lust at first sight, but I also believe there needs to be a bit of a build up.
Tessa introduces us to Evie who is trying to put her and her son's lives back together with a clean move to a new town. And she is very adamant about not wanting to get tangled up with someone because she needs to keep her life simple. Yet she falls hard quickly for Luke, without even really truly knowing him. There's not real background. Same goes for Luke. He's attracted to Evie, I get that, but within two days he wants her to be his wife and I just didn't get the chemistry between them that made that actually happen.
Given this is a short story, I do get there is limited time to get the characters together and get to their happily ever after, but it just felt super rushed in this story and did not feel like typical Bailey for me.
I did appreciate Bailey making Evie a strong independent woman who wanted to make her own decisions. I definitely felt that from her. Luke, on the other hand, is just this big burly man who has siblings and loves his farm but that's about all we know about him. I feel like in such a small town, perhaps introducing some other characters to the story so we could learn about Luke through them would have been helpful.
I feel like this story would have been better as a full novel but overall it was fun, and had nice spice.