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Hold Me (Cyclone Book 3) Kindle Edition

by Courtney Milan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 367 ratings
Editors' pick Best Romance
See all formats and editions
Jay na Thalang is a demanding, driven genius. He doesn’t know how to stop or even slow down. The instant he lays eyes on Maria Lopez, he knows that she is a sexy distraction he can’t afford. He’s done his best to keep her at arm’s length, and he’s succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Maria has always been cautious. Now that her once-tiny, apocalypse-centered blog is hitting the mainstream, she’s even more careful about preserving her online anonymity. She hasn’t sent so much as a picture to the commenter she’s interacted with for eighteen months—not even after emails, hour-long chats, and a friendship that is slowly turning into more. Maybe one day, they’ll meet and see what happens.

But unbeknownst to them both, Jay is Maria’s commenter. They’ve already met. They already hate each other. And two determined enemies are about to discover that they’ve been secretly falling in love…

Hold Me is the second book in the Cyclone series. It stands alone, but those who prefer to read in order may want to read Trade Me first.

The Cyclone Series Reading Order
Trade Me
Hold Me
Find Me
What Lies Between Me and You
Keep Me
Show Me
Previous page
  1. Book 3 of 3
    Cyclone
  2. Print length
    351 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publication date
    October 25, 2016
  6. File size
    2643 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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From the Publisher

A Latina woman looking into an Asian woman's eyes. Text: Friends online.
Text: Enemies in real life.
Text: The Cyclone Series. Cyclone is a high-tech company headed by an abrasive CEO.
Trade Me by Courtney Milan Hold Me by Courtney Milan The Year of the Crocodile by Courtney Milan
Trade Me Hold Me The Year of the Crocodile
See Details
See Details
See Details
Customer Reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
805
4.4 out of 5 stars
367
4.1 out of 5 stars
159
Price $4.99 $4.99 $0.99
Reading Order Book 1 (Blake and Tina) Book 2 (Jay and Maria) Blake & Tina extra

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I loved the sheer level ofgeekery in this book." -Book Gannet Reviews

"The snappy comebacks, the snark, the weird insular world ofscientists, the romance guaranteed that this book was FUN! It was also full ofstrong, capable women, especially Jay's mother and Maria's gran. I enjoyed itand really didn't want to say goodbye to the characters. Lovely! Recommended." -Nocturnal Book Reviews

"I love those angst filledromances where two damaged people find love. I really liked that the relationship betweenthese two is messy and imperfect and so honestly real." -Top 10 Romance Reviews

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01M5BVLAN
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Courtney Milan (October 25, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 25, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2643 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 351 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 367 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Courtney Milan

Courtney Milan

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Courtney Milan writes books about carriages, corsets, and smartwatches. Her books have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. She is a New York Times and a USA Today Bestseller.

Courtney pens a weekly newsletter about tea, books, and basically anything and everything else. Sign up for it here: https://bit.ly/CourtneysTea

Before she started writing romance, Courtney got a graduate degree in theoretical physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. After that, just to shake things up, she went to law school at the University of Michigan and graduated summa cum laude. Then she did a handful of clerkships. She was a law professor for a while. She now writes full-time.

Courtney is represented by Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
367 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

San
5.0 out of 5 stars Jay & Maria
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2024
Verified Purchase
Through tender moments and heart-wrenching dilemmas, Hold Me navigates the complexities of an unexpected opposites attract attraction. With compelling characters and raw authenticity, it's a captivating journey of self-discovery and unexpected connections that defy societal norms.
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Katie S.
4.0 out of 5 stars Cute romance! Give it a read!
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2024
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2/5 🌶

You've Got Mail trope, enemies to lovers, trans representation in main character, secret identities

Very cute, I smiled a lot! I felt like the characters were very real and authentic
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Candela
5.0 out of 5 stars Best rivals-to-lovers
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2018
Verified Purchase
-Diverse characters? Check
-A sweet and caring hero? Check
-A bold and smart heroine? Check
-Enemies to lovers? Check
-Tension and chemistry? Check
-Complex characters? Check
-A beautiful slow burn romance? Check

Maria is a trans woman and Latina, she is gorgeous and so smart. Writing this makes me smile because I needed this representation desperately, we don't see enough STEM Latinas anywhere. Many things she said about the Latinx community resonated with me, and it was beautiful.
Jay na Thalang is bisexual and Thai-Chinese, his dad is Buddist and her mom Muslim. He is serious, sweet and sometimes an ass. But as all Courtney's heroes do, he corrects his mistakes and realizes what he did wrong. I loved him.

The romance was so good, they flirt with math! I loved it, I laughed and smiled and cried.

Courtney is one of my favorite authors, everything she writes is amazing. I can't wait for the next book of the series.
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E Fitzgerald
5.0 out of 5 stars I am a huge fan of Courtney Milan and the previous book in this series was amazing. I went into Hold Me with high expectations .
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2017
Verified Purchase
I'm not usually big on contemporary romances. However, I am a huge fan of Courtney Milan and the previous book in this series was amazing. I went into Hold Me with high expectations and they were met at every turn.

As the blurb suggests, it's an enemies-to-lovers story. The book is told in first person present tense, alternating between the perspectives of Maria and Jay. Jay is a genius professor and a friend of Maria's brother. He works hard and doesn't have time for distractions. He also considers himself a feminist. However, when Maria shows up at his lab door looking for her brother, he quickly dismisses her--no one who looks as girly as she does could possibly have brains as well. Maria is a trans woman who has worked damn hard on the skills necessary to make herself look feminine and gorgeous. She's proud of her skills and they don't preclude the intelligence she needs to research and run disaster scenarios for her blog. A blog that Jay is a huge fan of and comments on frequently.

Not to say that Maria is the good guy and Jay the bad. The story has more nuance than that. Jay learns from his mistakes and puts genuine effort into doing better. And when he figures out that Maria and Em--the owner of the blog who he messages all the time and is half in love with--are the same person, he confesses immediately, rather than dragging it out in one of those painfully embarrassing scenarios. Maria also has her blind spots. She tends to conflate Asian heritage, despite having a number of friends of different Asian backgrounds. And although she does a good job of calling Jay on his inconsistent boundaries, her fear of intimacy makes her own boundaries pretty inconsistent at times.

As someone who struggles with work/life balance, I appreciated the portrayal of Jay's workaholism. It felt authentic to me. The resolution of this theme wasn't quite as solid as I would have liked, but I appreciated the subtle approach, rather than bashing the reader over the head with the way things worked out.

The author also took a more subtle approach to the characters' marginalised identities. Being a trans woman is shown as important to Maria's identity but is never the most important thing about her. Rather, her passions and intelligence are centred instead. Jay's bisexuality felt a little weak in comparison, without the same sort of significance to his character. Nevertheless, I appreciated that their sexualities didn't define who they were.
There is some terrifically snappy banter between the two as they flirt and exchange insults in the languages of maths and science. There was one insult regarding lasers and masturbation that had tears of laughter streaming down my face.

All in all, I found Hold Me a fantastic romance with all the feels. It cemented Courtney Milan as an author I will follow to the ends of the earth.
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Sheila M
4.0 out of 5 stars Enemies to Lovers Story
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2016
Verified Purchase
Maria: "It's just a part of me. I learned long ago to avoid the mountaintops of life. Sure, it's fun to get to the top. But storms come and lightning strikes, and it's no fun being exposed on top of the world in those moments. Daydreams are great, but an established salary and health benefits have to come first, thank you."

Jay: "If we hadn't managed to hate each other first, Em would have been it for me. I failed to see her on every conceivable level. How do I admit that?"

FINAL DECISION: I wanted to like this book more. Parts were brilliant and moving and parts just felt like distant. Jay started out unlikable and I don't know that he ever evolved enough for me to truly like him. But there was enough in it for me to give it another chance. Maybe a re-read in a year or two will change my mind.

THE STORY: Jay na Thalang is driven. A professor at Berkeley, he has focused on his work to the exclusion of all other relationships in his life. When he meets Maria Lopez, a student, he first insults her, and then knows that she is a distraction but insists that he is not interested. But he is interested. The first terrible meeting between Jay and Maria sets the standard for their combative relationship. Maria is cautious and Jay's dismissal of her hurts even though she believes him a jerk. What neither of them knows is that they have been corresponding and flirting for months. Maria secretly runs a doomsday blog and Jay has been commenting and communicating with Maria. The two have an online friendship that might be turning into something else and an offline hate relationship that might not be something they can overcome.

OPINION: There was much that I liked about this book. Both Jay and Maria are smart, sarcastic and imperfect. I love those angst filled romances where two damaged people find love. I loved the online relationship aspect where the two are themselves and open in ways that they can't be in real life. I also liked how the two strike bad sparks off one another in real life where they make assumptions and fail to see the truth of the other. This is especially true for Jay who thinks himself progressive and yet makes assumptions about Maria which hurt her. I really liked that the relationship between these two is messy and imperfect and so honestly real.

Maria is a woman who is always waiting for those she cares about to reject her. She writes an apocalyptic blog which is apropos because she is always waiting for disaster to strike. She fears asking too much of others and herself because life has given her disappointment. She is trans but while an essential part of who she is, it isn't the focus of the story except in how the reactions of others (especially her parents have effected her). I loved the quirks of her nature: she eats soup for her comfort food, demands the reusing of cream cheese containers as tupperware and wears high heels so high they make my ankles hurt just thinking about them.

Jay was harder for me to like and I never am sure that I ever fell in love with him as I like to do with characters. He treats Maria abominably the first time they meet because he makes assumptions and is more concerned with his own career than the human being in front of him. While many romantic heroes are jerks at times, Jay just continued to be jerky for too long. Jay has his reasons for his behavior, but even so it doesn't excuse his behavior. For me, things just got fixed too easily: with Jay's parents, with Maria. Perhaps he didn't suffer enough for me or maybe I didn't see enough of Jay acting good to counteract the bad. For whatever reason, I couldn't connect enough with Jay in order to make the romance superlative.

I liked this book and there was some beautiful writing in it. This is a book that I would read again to see if it was my own expectations that stopped me from really loving it.

WORTH MENTIONING: This book takes place in the college town of Berkeley. As a Cal grad, I was happy to see the school and town so well depicted. This book reminds me of what I love about Cal.

CONNECTED BOOKS: HOLD ME is the second book in the Cyclone series. It is a standalone which does not require reading the first book in the series although characters from that book appear.

STAR RATING: I give this book 3.5 stars.
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spencewynne
3.0 out of 5 stars Great story - terrible ebook edition missing multiple pages.
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2022
Verified Purchase
Great writing-story is tremendous but this ebook edition is missing up to 10 pages….erggh… messes with the continuity. Very unhappy about that. Greatly enjoyed the book despite this technical glitch.
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Top reviews from other countries

Dee Gelbart
5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it
Reviewed in Canada on March 18, 2023
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very fun first half, very real second half
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars So sweet!!
Reviewed in India on October 10, 2020
Verified Purchase
This was just such a beautifully sweet, tender, sad, wise book!! And l loved the speculative science as well!! Hats off to Courtney Milan, she's one of the best romance writers ever!
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Sigi
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read!
Reviewed in Germany on October 8, 2020
Verified Purchase
This may be the first time I've enjoyed a romance about a "girly girl" heroine. Maria manages to be both girly and kick-ass, despite her many issues, and Jay is the perfect match for her.
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etherese
5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet, smart, funny, and genuinely moving--and also delightfully progressive
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2016
Verified Purchase
My theory is pretty much this: Courtney Milan can't write a bad book. That's not to say that all of her books are created equal--I mean, let's be real here, "The Heiress Effect" is no "The Countess Conspiracy", am I right, folks?--but for me, she has an absolutely unparalleled track record of writing truly excellent romances that are sweet, smart, funny, wise, energising, and beautifully written. Equally importantly, and somewhat more rarely, Milan's books don't force me to put up with any mediocre characterisations or outdated gender norms as the price that I have to pay to get my romance fix. Honestly, my favourite thing about Milan's books is that they make progressive values really freaking sexy. There's a lot to love in this book for people who are interested in feminist issues or LGBTQ issues, but it's so seamlessly embedded into a genuinely beautiful and moving narrative with characters that are really lovely to spend time with that it doesn't feel at all preachy or pointed. (That being said, if you're a person who is generally suspicious of LGBTQ issues--if, for example, you are supportive of measures to make transgendered people use the bathroom of the gender they were assigned at birth--you should probably give this book a miss. Or you should read it with an open mind and engaged heart.) I'm certainly no expert on a lot of the issues affecting the LGBTQ community, and so I can't speak to how faithfully Milan has captured some of those experiences in this novel, but I would certainly say that it ticked absolutely every box for what I'm looking for in a romance novel. I fell in love with both the main characters (but, you know, mostly Jay, because it turns out I've got a thing for hot scientists who are good at flirting and difficult self-reflection) and I really didn't want their story to end.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Love it!
Reviewed in Canada on July 16, 2021
Verified Purchase
Weaving a complex and delightful romance with well developed protagonists, adorable nerdy flirting, and important and relatable character growth. Would recommend!
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