Exclusive Interview
Tessa Bailey Breaks Down ‘Dream Girl Drama’s Spicy Forbidden Romance & Dishes on Next Book
If you’re looking for some spice when you crack open a paperback, Tessa Bailey always delivers. The romance author is consistently churning out hit after hit, year after year. She effortlessly mixes sweet romance with dirty talk that’ll make you break a sweat no matter where you’re reading. (And those colorful book covers? Iconic.)
Bailey released her latest romance novel, Dream Girl Drama, on February 4. A chance encounter between hockey stud Sig Gauthier and country club princess Chloe Clifford changes their lives forever. It’s practically love at first sight, but these two are hit with a wrench early on in what would be a fairytale romance: His father is marrying her mother. Talk about awkward.
Sig and Chloe can’t be together, but when Chloe’s hunger for independence leads her to Boston, Sig steps up to make sure she gets on her feet. Bailey relishes the forbidden romance trope with Sig and Chloe’s relationship and brings the heat in new and very steamy ways. For 14 Days of Swooon, Bailey opened up about inspiration for Dream Girl Drama, being dubbed the “Michelangelo of dirty talk,” and her next book.
Warning: Spoilers for Dream Girl Drama ahead!
The genesis of Dream Girl Drama started at a hockey game. Bailey was at a New York Islanders vs. Detroit Red Bulls matchup in New York. “A player on the Detroit Red Wings made eye contact with me and that was literally all it took,” she revealed. “I based the entire character of Sig Gauthier on him.” Bailey kept the identity of the hunky hockey player a secret.
Sig Gauthier may be a badass on the court, but he’s a softie in real life. The author ranked him “very high” on her list of Bailey book boyfriends. “There’s something about him that is different than any of my other characters,” she explained. “He raised himself. He had a single mother who was working two jobs to make ends meet. Basically, all of his hockey equipment, all the fees he had to pay for hockey, he had to find a way to do it. He had to find a way to scrape by.”
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When he meets Chloe, Sig’s world is turned upside down. “Suddenly, she’s the one nice thing he wants in his whole life that he needs, and he wants to take care of her.” Sig is protective, but Bailey noted that he recognizes her “need for independence, and so he wrestles back his instinct to make sure she gets what she needs and space and independence that she wants.”
Bailey is a firm believer in a guaranteed happily ever after. All of her books end on a hopeful note, and Bailey doesn’t see that changing any time soon. “At the end of their story, they’ll always be happy, and it’ll always be believable that they’re going to stay together forever,” she stressed.
Sig and Chloe do find a way to be together (more on that later), but Dream Girl Drama is the epitome of a slow burn romance.
“It was definitely a slow burn because they had a legitimate reason that they couldn’t be together,” Bailey said. “Their parents are engaged. It’s against the rules. It’s genuinely forbidden. It’s not a miscommunication keeping them apart or anything like that. It’s real life stakes. Those moments where they’re in the same room, the tension was so thick because they want each other. They’ve established that already. It’s not a secret. And then they also know they have to stay apart.”
Bailey has been dubbed the “Michelangelo of dirty talk,” and she opened up about her feelings about the designation. “I sometimes it feels like a little bit of pressure because sometimes it just doesn’t fit the scene. I have to make sure I’m writing what’s authentic to the characters as opposed to trying to fulfill an expectation,” she explained.
The author admitted that “not allowing” Sig and Chloe to be together until later in the book was “very difficult because they probably have the most chemistry out of any characters I’ve written.”
Sig and Chloe don’t find a way to prevent their parents from getting married, but Sig gets the shock of his life when he learns that Harvey isn’t his real father through his private investigator, Niko. All the obstacles standing in Sig and Chloe’s way fall down. “I had like three different ways that I was going to try to solve the whole conflict. And it really just came down to what felt right in the moment,” she told Swooon.
Bailey has already finished her next two(!) books, and she’s staying in the sports universe. “In Dream Girl Drama, a feud ignites between some local baseball players and our professional hockey players. And thus, this rivalry is created. A lot of the players introduced in that scene are going to be key in the next [book] and the rest of the series.”
Consider us seated.
