Rowena’s review of Stay with Me (With Me #1) by Elyssa Patrick.

With one look, I’m his . . .

With one touch, he’s mine . . .

With one kiss, it changes everything between us . . .

I’ve been famous since I can remember. Singing, acting, dancing—I’ve done it all. The tabloids cover my every move, but I don’t want that anymore. I want to be normal, whatever that is.

When I leave Hollywood for college in Vermont, I’m on my own for the first time in my life. This is my chance to figure out who I am and what I want in life.

But it’s a lot harder than I expected. I can’t escape my image. Classes are difficult, and I’m struggling. And then there’s Caleb Fox.

Sexy, intriguing Caleb Fox.

Caleb is the one man who doesn’t want to use me. He breaks down my walls. He challenges me. He wants me. And I just don’t know if I can give him the same—or if he’ll stick around when he finds out my shameful secret that the tabloids haven’t managed to uncover.

Dating him is risky enough, but loving him could break me.

Oh man, it took me no time at all to dig right into this story. Hailey Bloom is a super star who wants to step out of the spotlight and be a normal person. She wants to go to college. She wants to find out who she is, outside of the Hollywood scene so she starts college hundreds and hundreds of miles away from Hollywood.

But going to college and being normal isn’t as easy as she thought it’d be. Her classes are hard, people stare at her and she can’t bring herself to trust anyone near her to sell her out to the paparazzi. But when she meets Caleb Fox, he’s the first person that she meets that intrigues her enough to want to get close…but why bother? He’s just going to break her trust and hurt her…

But Caleb Fox wears her down and fitting into his life is a lot more fun than she was expecting. The old worries are still hanging around but her feelings for Caleb are growing more and more each day and it’s hard to not fall for him since he’s just about the most perfect guy around. The more time she spends with him, the more she wants to spend time with him and she’s finding out that putting herself out there isn’t always a bad thing.

Building a life for herself out of the Hollywood spotlight is hard but Hailey is finding out that it’s exactly what she wanted. She’s finally got friends and people who actually care about her and that’s a lot more than she’s ever had with her mother and in Hollywood.

This story was like a straight up romance novel for college kids. It was filled to the brim with everything I love about romances and I happily ate everything up. I loved getting to know Caleb and seeing his love for Hailey grow with each passing page was swoonworthy. He was sweet, romantic and everything that women love in men and I adored him to pieces.

Hailey on the other hand, was a lot harder to connect with. She’s so distrustful and distant from everyone and it was hard to, well, like her. But as the story progresses, Hailey begins to thaw out and she begins to open up and I really started liking her. I liked the way that she was with Caleb’s family, the way that she was with Daphne and even the way that she was with Kate and the other guy’s. Of everyone in the story, Hailey grew the most and I was glad for it because she had a lot to offer those around her and I was glad when she finally started opening up.

I thought Elyssa Patrick did a great job telling Caleb and Hailey’s story. She really hooked me in with this book and I cannot wait for Jaime’s story, even though I saw that it was just a novella. I was hoping for more for him since he was one of my favorites of Caleb’s friends. Still, I’m looking forward to reading more from the series. I’m pretty anxious.

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

This book is available from Elyssa Patrick. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.