“Hot, heartwarming, and hilarious…This is a knockout.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review Award-winning, highly-acclaimed author Adriana Herrera delivers the sexy, modern enemies-to-lovers romance you’ve been waiting for. Starting over is more about who you’re with than where you live… Julia del Mar Ortiz is not having the best year. She moved to Dallas with her boyfriend, who … year.
She moved to Dallas with her boyfriend, who ended up ditching her and running back to New York after only a few weeks. Left with a massive–by NYC standards, anyway–apartment and a car lease in the scorching Texas heat, Julia is struggling…except that’s not completely true. Running the charitable foundation of one of the most iconic high fashion department stores in the world is serious #lifegoals.
It’s more than enough to make her want to stick it out down South.
The only monkey wrench in Julia’s plans is the blue-eyed, smart-mouthed consultant the store hired to take them public. Fellow New Yorker Rocco Quinn’s first order of business? Putting Julia’s job on the chopping block.
When Julia is tasked with making sure Rocco sees how valuable the programs she runs are, she’s caught between a rock and a very hard set of abs. Because Rocco Quinn is almost impossible to hate–and even harder to resist.
Also by Adriana Herrera:
Dreamers
Book 1: American Dreamer
Book 2: American Fairytale
Book 3: American Love Story
Book 4: American Sweethearts
Book 5: American Christmas
more
Here to Stay is a contemporary romance about starting over, learning to trust and value yourself, and found families. Julia and Rocco both grew up in the same part of New York City, but didn’t meet until they’d moved to Dallas–her for a new hopefully permanent job, him for a temporary one. The problem? His job might mean the end of hers. So they probably shouldn’t start hanging out together, right?
Easier said than done, it turns out. First, their jobs require they work closely together. Second, their brand new friend group keeps throwing them together. And of course they have some pretty solid chemistry complicating the heck out of things…
Ms Herrera did a nice job of balancing humor and angst in this story, giving us a slow burn romance that might have been frustrating at times (just have a conversation about your relationship, already!) but kept me turning the pages, hoping that Julia and Rocco would be able to pull together an HEA in the end.
Spoiler alert: they do! And OMG, it’s delicious…
Rating: 4 stars / A-
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
I found myself at first thinking that this was not going to be a very interesting read. For me, the beginning of this book was a little slow. You have Julia Ortiz moving to Texas with her boyfriend only to have him leave and leave her with a lease to the apartment. Already having a job she dives right in and sets up programs and as she has everything up and running she now has to have a suit from the company that provides the funding for all of their non-profit programs coming in to look and see exactly what it is that they do.
Turns out that the man she meets in the elevator and in the hall, Rocco Quinn is her downfall, or could be. He is the man from the company who is there waiting to be shown around so he can give the board of directors an honest assessment of the entire company and if they should take their company public on the stock market.
After meeting her they then next meet again at a small gathering that Julia has set up for all of the New Yorkers who have moved to Texas and want to get together. Here is when they want to be friends but at the same time don’t. it stays this way until her family from New York arrives and then he is invited to thanksgiving. It is after this that the story picks up as well as the heat between the two of them. The rest of the book is a fun fast-paced story with laughter, sadness, and wondering what will happen between Julia and Rocco and with the company and the agency that she works for? A very good book with really good characters and little storylines inside the bigger ones, very much worth the read. I received this book from Netgalley.com I gave it 5 stars. Follow us at http://www.1rad-readerreviews.com