Okay, I need to talk about this book's AUDACITY. Fourteen and a half hours. FOURTEEN. And for like the first three of those hours, I was sitting at my desk trying to finish a rebrand for a local coffee shop, muttering "get to the POINT" at my screen while Frida sat on my keyboard judging me and the book equally. Because here's the thing about Stay with Me — it takes its sweet, sweet time. And I mean that as both a complaint and, eventually, a love letter.
Let me back up. Calla Fritz is twenty-one years old, has never been kissed, carries scars — literal ones, on her face — from growing up with a mother who chose drugs over her daughter, and has built this careful little life at college that gets absolutely demolished when Mona steals her tuition money and racks up credit card debt in her name. So Calla has to drive back to this nowhere Pennsylvania town and deal with the wreckage. Again. The way Armentrout writes that resignation — that bone-deep exhaustion of being the parent to your own parent — hit me somewhere I wasn't ready for on a Tuesday afternoon.
The Slow Burn That Actually Burned Me
Jax. Jackson James. Six feet of bartender who has zero chill about boundaries and somehow makes that... work? The chemistry between him and Calla builds in this way that's less "instant fireworks" and more like someone slowly turning up the heat under a pot until you realize you're boiling. Sophie Eastlake voices Jax with this low, deliberate warmth that made my stomach flip more than once, and I'm not even embarrassed to admit it. When he tells Calla he's going to be patient with her — not in a pushy way, but in a way that says "I see what you've been through and I'm not going anywhere" — I had to pause my work and just... sit with that for a minute.
But here's where I have to be honest: the pacing in the middle section genuinely tested me. There's a subplot involving Mona's drug connections and some genuinely scary guys who want money from Calla, and it should feel urgent, but the book keeps circling back to the same emotional beats. Calla pushes Jax away, Jax is patient, Calla has a moment of vulnerability, repeat. By hour eight I was like, "Girl, I LOVE YOU, but we've done this dance three times already." The writing gets repetitive in a way that's more about the prose than the story — same phrases cycling back, same internal monologue patterns. At 1.0x speed, you feel every one of those fourteen hours.
Sophie Eastlake Could Narrate My Grocery List
So someone out there said Sophie Eastlake could read them the phone book and they'd enjoy it, and honestly? Same energy. Her Calla is this perfect blend of guarded and vulnerable — there's a tightness in how she voices Calla's dialogue early on that gradually loosens as Calla starts trusting people, and that kind of character evolution through voice alone is not easy to pull off. Her Jax is solid too, though I'll throw this caveat: her voice for Jase (a side character from earlier books) is... a choice. Like, nasally in a way that pulled me out of scenes he was in. Minor, but noticeable over fourteen hours.
The real magic is in the emotional scenes. There's a moment — I won't spoil it exactly — where Calla finally tells Jax about her scars, about what Mona let happen to her, and Eastlake's delivery goes so quiet you almost have to lean in. I was washing dishes when that scene hit and I just stood there with the water running, hands in the sink, crying into the steam. My heart. MY HEART. That scene alone justified every slow hour that came before it.
Katie, the side character bestie, is genuinely funny — Eastlake gives her this bright, slightly chaotic energy that cuts through the heavier moments perfectly. Every time Katie showed up I could feel the book exhale a little.
Who This Is For (And Who Should Bail)
If you need tight pacing and a lean plot, this will frustrate you. Full stop. But if you're someone who listens to romance for the emotional excavation — for that feeling of watching someone slowly, painfully learn they deserve to be loved — this book felt like sitting in a warm car during a rainstorm, windows fogging up, nowhere to be. Abuela would have loved this one. She always rooted hardest for the girls who'd been through it.
It's not a perfect audiobook. It's too long by at least two hours, the suspense subplot feels grafted on, and the repetitive writing can make you zone out during work (sorry, coffee shop rebrand). But when it hits, it HITS. The vibes are immaculate in those vulnerable moments.
Saving This One for the Next Rainy Sunday
I ugly-cried twice. Once at the scar reveal, once near the end when Calla finally stops running from the good thing standing right in front of her. Not my record, but quality tears. The kind that feel earned. Sophie Eastlake is the reason this audiobook works as well as it does — she carries flawed material with so much heart that you forgive the bloat. Burning gave me that same feeling of forgiving a book its messiness because the emotional core is just too good to walk away from. Worth a listen if you've got the patience for a slow unfurl. Just maybe keep tissues near your desk.
