Christina (stinarinareads)'s Reviews > Runaway Girl

✨4
🌶️2.5
📖~264 pages (hardcover)
📚Book 2 in interconnected series with different main couples
🎬Contemporary romance
❓Would I Recommend? Yes!

✏️Review:

Runaway Girl by Tessa Bailey is Book 2 in her Girl series, with Book 1 being Getaway Girl. For full disclosure, I read this book, the second one, before the first, and I still haven’t read the first one yet. But I plan to, especially after the fun I had with this one. I do have some thoughts on reading order and timelines and such though.

Runaway Girl follows bolting bride Naomi Clemons, who, after ditching someone’s dream wedding (because it certainly wasn’t hers), ends up in St. Augustine, Florida and barreling into the life of Special Forces diver Jason Bristow and the teenage sister he’s singlehandedly raising. Jason needs a beauty pageant coach and fast; his sister is determined to compete – and win – to honor the life of her deceased twin sister.

Naomi fits right into that role, a little too well, and perhaps that’s the problem, why she left her fiancée at the altar. She felt… boring. A trophy-wife to be, and that’s all she’d be. She felt like she had unfulfilled potential. At first, Naomi is determined to change for the chance to win her fiancé back, but as the physical tension and the emotional connections deepen in Florida and her new temporary life, she begins to wonder if her old life in the one she really wants…

Trope/plot quick hits:
🧩 Southern belle FMC x military diver MMC
🧩 FMC becomes MMC’s teen sister’s pageant coach
🧩 Forced proximity (living together)
🧩 Romance on a deadline

Safety:
🚩 Slight OM drama – FMC leaves her fiancé at the altar and has tentative plans to work on herself and maybe win him back, but she falls for the MMC instead and plans to fully close the chapter with her former fiancé, but since he’s the MMC from Book 1, we know he’s already moved on 😊 Although I’ll be honest, the “maybe I’ll win him back” mindset of the FMC went on WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long. We knew it was never gonna be serious, so why drag it out that long?

Maybe it’s because I didn’t read the first book, but the timeline jumps towards the end became a little jarring. The fiancé felt like a cardboard character with no personality – I would’ve loved to have seen a better resolution between the two, having been engaged with a history. I’m hoping to get a better understanding of his character while reading Book 1.
And while this also used a trope I’m not usually a fan towards the end, I still really enjoyed this read, and can add it among one of my favorites of TB’s. That honor still goes to It Happened One Summer.

The true star of the show is the romance between Naomi and Jason. It’s real, raw, slow, and genuine, even when they weren’t being entirely truthful with each other, particularly on Naomi’s side. But they couldn’t resist the pull of each other, very physical at first, but the emotional connection between them just grew and grew. They became a couple you rooted for. I was so over the ex-fiancé storyline a minute after it started, because the obvious attraction and connection between the MCs was so apparent.

Also, I was dumb and procrastinated this review for sooooo long after finishing, so apologies it’s not more detailed. I just went by my general remembrances, likes, and dislikes.