4.25 stars!!Anne Miller is a journalist, a crime reporter. She’s witty, bubbly, cheerful, and open. She’s in a knitting-group and an avid fan of Jack Bauer. The moment she decides that she’s quite happy being single and not going to search after love, fate bumps into her in the form of Mike Davoli at a music concert. Mike is a campaign coordinator for the Quality Education Initiative. He has Tourette's Syndrome. He’s organized, sweet, honest and a very big fan of a band called Phish. I really like this concept of romance novels based on reality. Reading romance in various genres has made me believe in easy, almost magical solutions to hurdles that inevitably surge in a starting relationship and HARD TO HOLD made me see again that building and maintaining a relationship is hard work and the road to a Happily Ever After is paved with struggles, disappointments, conflict and challenges to go with the chemistry, sexual attraction and soul-mate kind of love. There was one minor thing that bothered me reading this books and that was the conflict/argument between Anne and Michael and Michael's reasoning. This felt a little forced and didn't quite work for me, but I did love that it wasn’t brushed over or easily solved, which made the romance that much stronger in my opinion.The second half of HARD TO HOLD tells the story where other romance novels end and to me portrayed the real story after the Happily Ever After where most romance novels end. Reading this book was refreshing and I heartily welcome this new brand of romance.A sweet, warm and funny contemporary was just what I needed and just what I got from HARD TO HOLD. This book proved to me that you don't need hot and heavy dirty sex scenes to write an excellent and poignant contemporary love story and make me a fan. Don't get me wrong, I like hot monkey sex scenes, a lot, but they are not obligatory for me to thoroughly enjoy a book as reading HARD TO HOLD definitely proved to me. Seeing the attraction build, slowly but intensely was just delightful to read. I smiled and grinned numerous times at the subtle humor that was delivered as easily and smoothly as the love story. And the wedding put the cherry on the cake by making me tear up.I highly recommend HARD TO HOLD if you love subtle humor, sweet romance dosed with a healthy bit of reality and a HEA that is just perfect. And I am also definitely going to read more of Julie Leto's work as I do have some on my huge TBR and this first encounter with her writing has definitely left me wanting more.
