After I took a bit of a break from the heartbreak that was Come Back to Me by Mila Gray, I decided to finally read the second book in the series – Stay with Me. This is what I knew about it going in – it was about Jessa’s best friend Didi, and there was another Marine as a love interest. And for those of you who don’t know about the internship where I spent a lot of my time walking past the Marine barracks in DC and gazing fondly at the dress uniforms (meow), I have a thing for men in uniform, and Marines in particular. I have a thing for a lot of things, but this one is deep seated. In any case! It’s another military love story that broke my damn heart and I was there for it.
So. Here we go.
It’s about four years after the events in Come Back to Me – Jessa is acting in Hollywood, and Didi has finished her college degree and started her PhD in counseling. Her dad helps her get an internship at a veteran’s hospital, where he is the therapist on duty. It’s there that she meets Walker, the surly Marine who has psychosomatic blindness and guilt of the worst kind from his time on deployment. Didi is drawn to him, but she’s also dating a Hollywood actor that she met through Jessa… she’s torn, but it’s also against the rules for her to date a patient during her internship. She gets caught up with Walker anyway, until events and misunderstandings tear them apart, and he moves across the country. Is Didi the one who can melt the heart of the grumpy Marine in her father’s care?
3 Things I Loved
- Walker. I LOVED Walker! Okay, yes, he’s a Marine and that’s probably part of it, but I also loved his characterization. I enjoy a good grumpy love interest. And he has good reason to be grumpy – his past is complicated, and his feelings are complicated, and everything is just… deliciously complicated. I loved him.
- The other patients at the hospital. There was the wide variety, and it seemed to truly span the breadth of what one might find at a veteran’s hospital. All the characters were well-written.
- Didi. I thought I’d love Didi, and while I did like her, the last part of the book made me feel like she was kind of dense. That’s not a story I’m going to tell here – because when Didi was with Walker, I LOVED her so much.
Dislikes/Problematic Content
Okay, so spoilers for a second – what kind of romance novel doesn’t have an epilogue??? I’d like to know what happens after the HFN! Give me something, good grief! All in all, that was pretty minor.
Also, the storyline with Didi’s parents was weird and misleading, but that’s all I’m going to say about it because of unnecessary spoilers.
I thought the injuries, disabilities, and mental illnesses related to war heroes was very well written. I didn’t notice very much that was inherently problematic. Definite content warning for war and violence, though. Those memories were hard to read.
Rating
A reminder of the rating scale:
- Red = DNF, I hated everything
- Orange = Ugh, no thank you
- Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
- Green = This was good!
- Blue = Oh my gosh, I loved this book!
- Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart and EVERYONE should be reading it!
I really enjoyed this book, and like I said, Walker was a gem of a character. I want more Walker. I wanted that epilogue so badly! I still want it. Mila Gray – what is the epilogue to this story?? Tell me!! (Please and thank you.) All of that considered, I’m going to give Stay with Me a GREEN rating. I enjoyed it a lot!
Has anyone else read this series? I’ve really been enjoying Mila Gray’s writing!
Happy reading!
-A.
Snark & Squee 