Review: Here to Stay by Adriana Herrera
Here to Stay by Adriana Herrera Published by Carina Press on August 25, 2020
Genres: Multicultural & Interracial, Romance, Contemporary
Format: ARC
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Julia del Mar Ortiz is not having the best 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.
Julia and Rocco are both New Yorkers, in Dallas, Texas for different reasons. Julia has a wonderful dream job in Dallas but is only there because her boyfriend dumped her after it was his idea to move. She decided to make the most of it though and is doing her best. Her career is going well, her social life? Not so much.
Rocco is temporarily living in Dallas to help take the company Julia works ready for an IPO. The problem with that is it may cost Julia her job. These two have an attraction to each other, though at first, they both try like hell to fight it – for obvious reasons though. They kinda work together and his decisions could affect her livelihood soooo probably not the best idea.
However, when Julia starts a meetup group for fellow ex-New Yorkers, Rocco joins and their attraction reaches a full boil. They both see that there’s more to each other than they had thought and soon their relationship turns from a potential one time, under the radar thing to so much more.
These two were really great fleshed out characters. Both with a sort of savior ‘put others before myself’ complex. They are very similar in that way and though their backgrounds are different, there’s a certain commonality and bond between them that I enjoyed a lot. They let each other be. Rocco hasn’t had the best upbringing and when we meet him in this novel he is still working through parts of that relationship with his parents. Julia doesn’t pity him or try to become his therapist, she’s simply there and that means a lot to Rocco. Julia, on the other hand, is a self-assured woman and while she still has some initial hangups over her last breakup, is a woman that is taking all of these changes in her life in stride. She doesn’t take any shit from nobody, including Rocco’s ass with this Superman attitude he got going on.
I must say, I really liked Here to Stay. When they said it was heartwarming, not one lie was told. While Here to Stay is a romance, it’s definitely a story of family – not just the one we are born into but the one we find and build on our own. There’s a real sense of community throughout this entire novel and I loved reading it, providing me with some much-needed smiles along the way. Adriana infuses this story with great Caribbean culture and FOOD! I won’t lie, I was hungry reading some of the scenes LOL. Oh and my favorite line? “One thing is clean, a whole other is Caribbean-people clean.” I FELT THIS! If ain’t no bleach of Fabuloso was used, is it really clean? lol lol
Ooh and lastly, the secondary characters? Fantastic! I wouldn’t mind revisiting these characters!
Natalya is the author of All The Things I Never Said, a soul-stirring collection of short stories, prose and love letters for the soulful wanderers, the brokenhearted and the hopeless romantics.
You can follow her rantings and occasional sparks of brilliance on Twitter @NatalyaMuncuff.
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