Stay With Me

In the summer of 2004, Noemi DiMatteo reluctantly returns to the small town of Monte San Giacomo, Italy with the full intention of hiding out in her room for the remainder of the summer in hopes of avoiding Massimo, her ex-boyfriend whose calls she has repeatedly forwarded to voicemail for the past six months. Last summer, Noemi began a long distance romance she thought she could handle. She never imagined it would become a love triangle of sorts involving her best friend, Gianna. When Noemi is finally convinced by Gianna to give up the shelter of her room, she finds herself in an obvious encounter with the one person she has been eluding, Massimo. After this meeting of fate, Noemi learns it is much more difficult then she had anticipated trying to resist Massimo's charm and their natural connection to one another.Noemi struggles with trying to find the balance between reconciling with Massimo and helping Gianna find love of her own.Despite dealing with the secrets, jealousy and love triangles of Monte San Giacomo, Noemi and Massimo are able to make amends and pick up the relationship from where they last left off and spend a once in a lifetime summer together. However when Noemi returns home to New Jersey, the relationship is tested in a way Noemi could have never foreseen.Stay with Me was inspired by the early child hood and teenage summers I spent in the real town of Monte San Giacomo, Italy. The 79,700-word novel is written in first person narration and represents the true events of a teenage love story. Stay with Me is a romance and coming of age story that paints a vivid and realistic picture of a love lost abruptly and forces its protagonist into a distorted adulthood.