Book Review: Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey

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Rosie and Dominic Vega are the perfect couple: high school sweethearts, best friends, madly in love. Well, they used to be anyway. Now Rosie's lucky to get a caveman grunt from the ex-soldier every time she walks in the door. Dom is faithful and a great provider, but the man she fell in love with ten years ago is nowhere to be found. When Rosie's girlfriends encourage her to demand more out of life and pursue her dream of opening a restaurant, she decides to demand more out of love too. Three words: marriage boot camp. Never in a million years did Rosie believe her stoic, too-manly-to-emote husband would actually agree to relationship rehab with a weed-smoking hippie. Dom talking about feelings? Sitting on pillows? Communing with nature? Learning love languages? Nope. But to Rosie's surprise, he's all in, and it forces her to admit her own role in their cracked foundation. As the two complete one ridiculous - yet surprisingly helpful - assignment after another, their remodeled relationship gets stronger than ever. Except just as they're getting back on track, Rosie discovers Dom has a secret... and it could demolish everything. ~~~~ I liked the story about a troubled marriage where each needs to learn each other's love languages in order to make their marriage work. It was very different than any love stories I've ever read because the marriage was already there, it was the work they had to do to keep it together that made a difference. However, I felt the husband, Dominic, to be very possessive and the relationship seemed to be based on sex and that was all. Rosie and Dominic were full of desire for one another physically, but that seemed to be the extent of their relationship. The word "love" wasn't even mentioned until chapter 22 or so. It was all about the physical wanting and not the emotional love of the relationship. Because of that this book was steamy. I don't dislike steam in a romance novel, but as I said before, he was possessive and he just seemed so demanding, even though she was all in as far as that part of the marriage went. I liked the concept of the story, but I disliked the character Dominic and was never able to shake his physical hunger for his wife that dominated the relationship. Warning: This is a steamy read.