Book Review — Hold You Close by Melanie Harlow & Corinne Michaels

“Ian Chase broke my heart at seventeen, and I’ve spent the last eighteen years hating him for it. He makes it easy, with his smart mouth and playboy lifestyle—which I unfortunately have to observe since he lives behind me. Every time I see him climbing out of his pool, practically naked and unreasonably sexy, my blood boils. I’ve always loved to loathe him. I never planned to need him…”

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!! I’M BACK TO READING!!!! Thank you all for being so patient with me while we moved and got settled into our new home. I’m the kind of reader where I really need to “zone in” to my book. I’ve never been able to just read a few pages here or there or read while there’s lots going on around me so with all the craziness that was going on with our move, I just didn’t have the time to really commit myself to reading and didn’t feel it would be fair to a book for me to only give it half my attention so I just took a little reading break while we were getting our lives together and I focused on keeping you guys up to date with sales and new releases and such. But now that we’re settled, I will say that I have been just STARVED for books and was SO EXCITED to dive right back in today!!!

This was such a great book to kick off my reading again with. As a long-time fan of both these authors individually, I was so excited to see that they’d co-written this book so I one-clicked the second it went live and was not disappointed!!

If you’re a fan of ENEMIES-TO-LOVERS romances, then you are going to loooove this book!! I mean it really put the “enemy” in enemies-to-lovers. This heroine and hero didn’t just bicker and banter, they downright fought each other. Growing up, she’d been his little sister’s best friend and he had mostly only seen her as that. But she’d crushed on him hard, and I mean *hard* (almost a leeeeetle too intensely if you’d asked me after just reading the prologue). And when she thought they’d finally have a chance to be together, he broke her heart (let’s be clear though — I don’t fully blame him in this case because she *was* a little OTT back then) but still he broke her heart and she was never able to forgive him — mostly because, for as much as she hated him, she also still loved him, and she hated that she loved him still. And he hated her for making him break her heart when all he’d really wanted was to be with her (yeah, that logic is a little shaky, even I admit, but his intentions were good even if his actions were misguided).

“Did he really have no clue how long I’d loved him? Did he not know how many nights I’d spent dreaming that he’d see me as something other than his little sister’s best friend?”

Anyhoooo fast forward several years (almost two decades!) and these two hate-birds were still living side by side each harboring more resentment against each other with each passing year. But then something happened to shake both their worlds in an unexpectedly tragic way that neither of them ever saw coming.

His sister (and her best friend) was killed in a freak plane crash leaving her three young children behind in their care. And no matter what their history was, it forced them both to think past themselves and make things work for the sake of these kids that both of them loved like crazy. And in the midst of the chaos of dealing with such intense heart-break and becoming overnight parents, they also both slowly were able to explore the fact that underneath all the anger, bitterness, and hurt, they both still shared an undeniable attraction and deep love for each other…

“You have a long history of thinking the worst of me—“
“I’m not—“
His hand covers my mouth. “Shut up for once and listen,” Ian commands. “I’ve let you go on thinking whatever you want because if that’s what you want to believe, nothing I say will change your mind. But hear this.” His hand drops. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I want things to be with us.”

I found this to be an addictive read. I read it in one sitting and everything about the story flowed quite smoothly the whole way through. The heroine was a little unreasonable at times (though more so in the beginning and less so as the story went on) and the hero could be quite a bit of a dick (we’re talking serious fighting words), but nobody’s perfect and I did enjoy seeing them put aside their differences and slowly form their unconventional family unit as they gave into the attraction they both still shared. And no matter what their shortcomings were, I loved that they learned the error of their ways and seeing them both care so lovingly for those kids really made me, as the reader, believe that they were genuinely good people working through a lot of hurt but that they meant well so you couldn’t help but root for them. Oh and the ending (and epilogue) was all kinds of sweet, swoony, and heart-warming!!

If you’re looking for something new to read and you love a good angsty romance, definitely try this!

Rating: 4-4.5 stars. Contemporary Adult Romance Standalone.