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My Review:Title: Ever After Always
Author: Chloe Liese
Series: Bergman Brothers #3
Published by: Indie
Release Date: January 12, 2021
Format: ebook
Pages: 366
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Source: Overdrive
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 2, Lenoreo's 2023 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:
Blurb:Buckle up for an emotional journey of hijinks, heartache, and a hot slow-burn in this marriage-in-crisis romance about going the distance to make love last.
Aiden
I’ve spent twelve years loving Freya Bergman and twelve lifetimes won’t be enough to give her everything she deserves. She’s my passionate, tender-hearted wife, my best friend, and all I want is to make her happy. But the one thing that will make her happiest is the one thing I’m not sure I can give her: a baby.
With the pressure of providing and planning for a family, my anxiety’s at an all-time high, and I find myself pulling away, terrified to tell my wife how I’m struggling. But when Freya kicks me out, I realize that pulling back has turned into pushing too far. Now it’s the fight of a lifetime to save our marriage.
Freya
I love my cautious, hard-working husband. He’s my partner and best friend, the person I know I can count on most. Until one day I realize the man I married is nowhere to be found. Now Aiden is quiet and withdrawn, and as the months wear on, the pain of our growing distance becomes too much.
As if weathering marriage counseling wasn’t enough, we’re thrown together for an island getaway to celebrate my parents’ many years of perfect marriage while ours is on the brink of collapse. Despite my meddling siblings and a week in each other’s constant company, this trip somehow gets us working through the trouble in paradise. I just can’t help worrying, when we leave paradise and return to the real world, will trouble find us again?
Ever After Always is a marriage-in-crisis, opposites-attract romance about a sensitive, fierce-loving woman and her resilient husband who has anxiety disorder. Complete with island vacation antics, a sibling prank gone wrong, and a steamy slow burn, this standalone is the third in a series of novels about a Swedish-American family of five brothers, two sisters, and their wild adventures as they each find happily ever after.
4 stars — This one was a hard read for me. Part of me is waffling over 3.5 stars rounded up, but I honestly can’t decide. It doesn’t help that I read it while sick, which I honestly think just taints a read just a bit, you know? You’re foggier and all that.
So why was it hard? Well, marriage in crisis books, if done well, usually just are. I think part of the problem for me is that we didn’t get a lot of flashbacks to the good moments in their relationship like you might in other books in this trope. Those help to balance. Of course we did see glimpses of them in the first two books, but not enough to fill me up. So I think I would have appreciated a bit more balance there.
At first I was pretty annoyed with Aiden and his choices not to talk to Freya about what was going on with him. Strangely though, the author actually made me really see how there was hurt and bad choices on both sides for this couple. And so much of that was hitting tough times and getting tested as a couple, and forgetting that you each might need different things from the other person. So they were both protecting the other in a way that showed loved the way they need it, but not the way their SO needed it. I felt for that. I doubt there are many couples that need love in exactly the same way, and it’s so much easier to default to what makes sense for *you* instead of remembering what your loved one actually needs. So in the end I thought the author showed a balance to how these two got to where they got, and how they both needed to work on things to get back to each other. And I truly did see them work on those things, I actually came out at the end feeling pretty good about them as a couple. Not that they won’t hit more rough times, but that maybe they’ll have better tools for next time.
So in the end it wasn’t really a normal romance book for me. I will admit that I wasn’t quite as connected to some of the steamy sections, but I don’t know if that was me being sick or just the stronger emphasis on physical at times. Which is misleading, b/c I genuinely feel they had the whole shooting match when it came to their connection, so basically ignore me.
Definitely still enjoying the series, and definitely looking forward to the next book for sure!
Great review! I loved this one, but it was a hard read.