Hard to Hold by Julie Leto

Here's a quick blurb from Ms. Leto's lovely website:  New York lobbyist Michael Davoli feels like he’s been sucker punched when he meets Anne Miller at a concert. When fate leads him to move into same Albany apartment building where Anne lives, Michael falls hard. After all, Anne’s hot, his dog likes her, and she’s catnip to the senses after she picks a lock faster than Sydney Bristow can disarm a nuke.


Always fiercely independent, Anne’s crackerjack reporting skills and keen intellect are no match for the chemical reaction she has to this man with electric blue eyes. But while Mike effortlessly holds her with his gaze, he withholds the embrace she longs for. Why is he so distant? Has Anne misread his signals? When he finally confesses that he suffers from a neurological disorder that he’s learned to disguise from others but could keep him from ever holding her through the night—she makes a choice that changes the rest of her life.

Anne isn’t about to let anything like Tourette’s Syndrome keep her from the man of her dreams. But Mike has a second secret. Will this secret be the one that even a grand passion cannot survive?

My Take
While this is not a YA book, I wanted to read this book the moment I saw that the male lead character had Tourette's Syndrome.  My son also has Tourette's.  Like the main character, Michael, my son has a milder case of TS.  I've come to know that it is one of the most misunderstood syndromes out there.  However, I love seeing characters with differences in books. 
 
I liked this book a lot.  On the cover it claims this book is 'The First Reality Based Romance' and I would have to say that's probably fairly accurate.  We don't often find romance books where characters deal with reality based situations such as living with Tourette's, etc.  I felt the building up of Anne and Mike's relationship was about right.  The pacing of it all was terrific.  It was a fire that started out slow and built up over time.  I appreciated the fact that Mike's Tourette's really wasn't the focus of their issues, but merely one facet of the challenges they had to face.
 
I also totally <3 the fact that she mentioned Red Rocks Amphitheatre (something I pass everyday).  I grew up in Morrison, Colorado and it's just kind of a little bonus to see someplace I'm so familiar with in a book.  There were even a couple exotic locales travelled to that added some spice. 
 
There were only a couple of little nit picky drawbacks I noticed.  One, they discuss on the back copy how Michael is fearful of his tics hurting Anne during the night.  That situation is never discussed much in the book.  It's mentioned casually as an aside, but made to sound like not an issue.  The other very minor point, Anne is a curvy girl in the pages of the book and they put a super slender chicky on the cover (totally not under the authors control, I know that), but it would have been nice to see a curvy girl up there front and center.  Like I said, minuscule things and don't take away from the story one bit.
 
I'm giving this 3 big smooches!  What about you, do you like romance novels?  If so, what type of romances do you like to read?
 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Health Communications, Inc. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”