ARC Review – Hard Ever After by Laura Kaye

I received this book for free from Inkslinger PR in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Hard Ever After by Laura Kaye
Series: Hard Ink #4.6
Series Rating:
Published by HarperCollins Publishers on February 2nd 2016
Genres: Contemporary
Pages: 96
Format: eARC
Source: Inkslinger PR
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Justice served. Honor restored. Team reunited. 
After a long battle to discover the truth, the men and women of Hard Ink have a lot to celebrate, especially the wedding of two of their own—Nick Rixey and Becca Merritt, whose hard-fought love deserves a happy ending.
As Nick and the team shift from crisis mode to building their new security consulting firm, Becca heads back to work at the ER. But amid the everyday chaos of demanding jobs and their upcoming nuptials, an old menace they thought long gone reemerges, threatening the peace they’ve only just found.Now, for one last time, Nick and Becca must fight for their always and forever, because they know that when true love overcomes all the odds it lasts hard ever after.

I love this series and this novella was a great way to wrap it up. It’s really more of a long epilogue than a standalone story. Even though the main plot centered on Nick and Becca, everyone else was there, too, minus Ike and Jess, who are off setting up the spinoff series. In a series like this, where everyone is living together and everything is so heightened, it can be easy to get everyone their happily ever after and move on, but I love getting little glimpses like this of their lives. I love seeing how all of these couples, who all met under pretty extreme circumstances all lived in a big house together for safety, are going to make the move from cohabitating to pairing off and finding their own living arrangements and getting back to their regular lives. Easy and Jenna, especially, interested me, because Jenna was so young. She and her sister Sara had their lives and educations interrupted by this whole mess, so I wanted to know if they were going to go back and finish. I love getting small glimpses into what everyone has planned.

There was so much to love here. Nick and Becca are so close to getting their happily ever after when one of the few loose ends shows up to get his revenge. I have to admit, I had completely forgotten about this guy, but Laura Kaye managed to get me caught back up pretty quickly. And even though the mystery element was allegedly the main focus of the book, it didn’t distract from everything else. This story was really romantic, possibly the most romantic of the series. There’s a scene in a tattoo parlor, Nick’s proposal, and all the parties that go along with wedding planning. All of them had me smiling and genuinely happy for these people.  The love between all of these characters, not just Nick and Becca, and not just the couples, but the love that everyone involved has for each other, is on display and really comes into play.

Laura Kaye has done a great job wrapping up her Hard Ink series. She’s an auto-buy author for me, and I am so excited for the spin-off series to start. I was hoping that we would see glimpses of these characters in that series, and I’d still be ok with that, but it’s also ok if we don’t. This closed out the story of these characters perfectly; at this point, I just want them all to get their well-deserved happily ever afters.

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