I’ve been a single dad for five years. Then the wrong woman rented the guest cabin behind my house, and I knew right then she was going to ruin everything.
When Baylor’s mother walked out, I made a promise—I’d be enough. Just the two of us. No one to disappoint her. No one else to leave.
Then Emelia Greene rolled into Echo Lake in a Mercedes and a power suit to convince the townspeople to change what makes our small town great. She’s everything this place isn’t.
Emelia’s not supposed to be kind. She’s not supposed to be good with my daughter. She’s definitely not supposed to be the one I find myself confiding in at the end of my dock every night.
She’s leaving in three months. I know that.
The problem is, I can’t stop wondering what it would be like if a woman like her belonged in a place like this.
In a life like mine.
(ARC Read)
Piper Rayne always delivers when it comes to small-town romance, and Holding Ground gave me everything I love about the trope—the meddling townspeople, the gossip that spreads faster than actual news, the family who is entirely too involved in everyone’s business, and a community that might fight change with everything they have but will protect their own just as fiercely. Except this time, some of the biggest gossips are men, and I absolutely loved that.
Elliott Mercer is a single dad who has spent the last five years making sure his daughter, Baylor, never feels the loss of the mother who walked away. He promised himself he would be enough for her, and he’s built their entire life around keeping her safe, happy, and protected from the kind of disappointment he’s already experienced. Add in his brothers fighting for the title of Baylor’s favorite uncle, and there is so much warmth tucked inside this family.
Then Emelia Greene rolls into Echo Lake from Boston in her Mercedes and power suit, representing the development firm hoping to build low-rise condos on a parcel of land in town. To Elliott, she represents everything that could threaten the place he loves. He doesn’t want Echo Lake to change, and he certainly doesn’t trust the woman being paid to convince everyone that change could actually be good for them.
Unfortunately for Elliott, Emelia is also renting the guest cabin behind his house for the three months she’s in town.
And the more time he spends with her, the harder it becomes to keep seeing her as the enemy.
I feel drawn closer to him, a tug on some invisible thread between us.
What I loved most about Emelia was that underneath the successful city-girl exterior is a woman who has spent her life trying to figure out where she belongs. She’s good at her job, understands small towns better than everyone assumes she does, and genuinely wants to find a solution that benefits Echo Lake rather than stripping away everything that makes it special. Slowly, she starts finding a place among these people she was never supposed to become attached to. And somewhere along the way, she slides almost effortlessly into the empty space in Elliott and Baylor’s lives.
Baylor was such an important part of why this romance worked for me. Elliott isn’t making decisions for himself anymore, and Emelia understands that. I loved the open communication between Elliott and Emelia for most of the story, especially when it came to keeping Baylor’s heart at the center of their choices. Emelia also gets to pull from some of her own experiences and missteps to help Baylor navigate things differently, which added another layer to their relationship beyond simply making Emelia the love interest who gets along with his daughter.
“I’ve been thinking that the fact my daughter is so taken with you is a problem…the fact that I’m also so taken with you is the bigger problem.”
And Elliott? I don’t even know if I’d call this man truly grumpy. He’s cautious. Protective. Stubborn as hell, absolutely. But he’s also a man who has experienced people leaving and has decided the safest way to protect himself and his daughter is to stop giving anyone the opportunity to do it again. Watching his walls come down one day at a time as Emelia becomes the person he confides in during their conversations at the end of the dock was one of my favorite parts of their relationship. And once all that simmering attraction finally gets room to breathe? Their chemistry is HOT.
But Holding Ground is just as much about finding your people as it is about falling in love. Emelia comes to Echo Lake as the outsider tasked with changing it, only to discover the kind of community and connection she’s spent her entire life searching for. Elliott has spent years believing that holding tightly to what he already has is the only way to keep it safe, and Emelia challenges him to consider that change doesn’t always mean losing something. Sometimes it means making room for something you didn’t realize was missing.
“I guess, thank you for reminding me that there’s more to life than the way I’ve been living for the past five years.”
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Piper Rayne small town without an entire cast of characters sticking their noses where they absolutely belong. Between the Thermos Crew, Dottie, Deacon, Elliott’s brothers, and basically everyone in Echo Lake having an opinion, the town has so much personality. I also loved the poker nights and the way they weren’t treated as some guys-only corner of Echo Lake. It’s a small detail, but it fit perfectly with the larger sense of community in this book—everyone has a seat at the table, usually along with an opinion they weren’t asked to share.
Elliott thought holding on tightly was the only way to protect the life he’d built. Emelia thought she simply hadn’t found the place where she fit yet. Turns out, sometimes you don’t have to change everything to make room for something new.
“Then do it scared. Sometimes you just have to do it scared.”
I’m already ready to head back to Echo Lake, and I have a feeling those Mercer brothers are going to keep things interesting.
Release Date: September 10th
Thank you to Piper Rayne for the ARC read!