Review: Stay With Me by J. Lynn

My rating: ★★★★
Genre: new adult, romance, contemporary.
Series: Wait For You #3

Blurb from Goodreads:

At 21, Calla hasn’t done a lot of things. She’s never been kissed, never seen the ocean, never gone to an amusement park. But growing up, she witnessed some things no child ever should. She still carries the physical and emotional scars of living with a strung-out mother, Mona—secrets she keeps from everyone, including her close circle of college friends.

But the safe cocoon Calla has carefully built is shattered when she discovers her mom has stolen her college money and run up a huge credit card debt in her name. Now, Calla has to go back to the small town she thought she'd left behind and clean up her mom’s mess again. Of course, when she arrives at her mother’s bar, Mona is nowhere to be found. Instead, six feet of hotness named Jackson James is pouring drinks and keeping the place humming.

Sexy and intense, Jax is in Calla’s business from the moment they meet, giving her a job and helping her search for Mona. And the way he looks at her makes it clear he wants to get horizontal . . . and maybe something more. Before Calla can let him get close, though, she’s got to deal with the pain of the past—and some very bad guys out to mess her up if she doesn’t give them her mom.

My review:

Everyone who follows me on Instagram or Goodreads just knows I’m obsessed with JLA/J. Lynn’s books. She’s the queen of New Adult books. I was super excited to read this one, but… I had some weird feelings after finishing this book. This is why it took me some days to think before starting this review. But anyway, here it is:

“Dear God in Heaven, up close like this, he was truly a masculine masterpiece of mouthwatering hotness.”

This book is about Calla. She’s friends with ‘The Hot Guy Brigade’ and their girlfriends. The Hot Guy Brigade consist of Cameron & Avery (from Wait For You) & Jase and Teresa (from Be With Me). But they don’t know the real her. She lied about her family situation… She desperately keeps her past as a secret to everyone. It’s not something she’s proud of. She needs to concentrate on her future. Finish college, built a career etc. She works her ass off to pay her classes, and so far everything goes as planned. But life has other plans for her… Her past catches up with her when her mom, a drug addict, steals all her college money.

Calla has no other ways to pay her classes and she’s basically broke. She decides to go back home, to look for her mom and to demand her money back. When she goes to the family bar, she finds out her mom has disappeared.

At the bar, she meets Jackson James aka Jax, the bartender. Jax with the nice ass and panty-dropping smile…

“God, he had a nice ass. A freaking work of art. Even though his jeans were nowhere tight, but the general form - “

Calla was such a likeable character! I loved the way she was! She’s super funny when there’s a hot guy around! She thinks the most hilarious things. She made me crack up a few times, loved it! She’s a very strong girl who choose a better path in life because of her mom and ‘the accident’. Calla’s very insecure about her looks because of the scar that covers a large part of her face. And Jax still feels attracted to her. I loved that about him. He was super sweet and protective and he cared a lot about Calla. They are both scarred and the connection between them is oh so hot.

“God Almighty, I might’ve just committed a cardinal sin just by thinking it, but he was like Cam 2.0”

I felt like this book was a little different to the previous ones. This one had a lot of fast-paced scenes, because of the ‘gang’ touch. It’s also a little more dramatic. The search to her mom is very mysterious and a lot of scary things happen to Calla. There were lots of secrets to reveal. It was good, but a little long. This book has 450 pages and it actually took me a while to read it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though.

“He read? Oh my God, guys that read were like unicorns. They only existed in fairy tales.”

The whole story line is nice actually. Lots of sexy scenes with Jax, but I didn’t really liked the ending… The ending itself wasn’t bad, my feelings about Jax were. Jax did something and although Calla forgave him, I didn’t. I just couldn’t get over it. I don’t know if other people felt this way though. I’m probably the only one… oh well…

Jase turned his head to me, brows raised. “If I liked guys—you know, swung that way, I’d get naked after that.”

I blinked. Um.

“And I’d put a ring on that,” Cam added, moving to where Avery sat.

I blinked again. Uh.

My favorite parts in this book were with Cam, Avery, Teresa and Jase though! I liked that they appeared a few times and actually helped Calla. (So consider reading the books in order to avoid spoilers from the previous books!). There was one scene with just the girls and I loved it. It was beyond perfect!

“I love your sense of humor and the fact you never ate grits before. There’s so much I love about you that I know I’m in love with you. So, honey, you can have all my shirts you want.”

So this book is good, just not my favorite one in the series. Oh and I just found out the next book will be about Roxy! I loved her in this book, not just because of this: “I decided that I immediately liked her, mainly because she was wearing a Supernatural T-shirt with Dean and Sam on it.” But also because her thing with Reece intrigued me a lot. I can’t wait to read more about her in Fall With Me!