Author: Laurelin Paige
Series: Fixed #5
Release Date: June 25, 2018
MY RATING: ★★★★★
You act so high and mighty, you and your perfect pregnant wife Alayna. With your perfect child and your perfect home.
You weren't always perfect. Your past is filled with misdeeds.
Does your wife know all your secrets?
Would she stand behind you if she did?
You think because she’s on bedrest you can protect her? How sweet.
Sleep tight, you two.
-An Old Friend.
If she’d needed a day or two in bed, upset and processing and obsessively looking through pictures of the event on social media, what would that have mattered?
I trusted her to come back to me when she was through her anxiety.
Maybe that was the key. Maybe she wasn't punishing me —but rather, was testing me. Seeing if I was capable of actually letting her go to work and not interfering. Not showing up, cold and demanding, when she lost track of time.
Because in truth, I was the one who wasn't strong enough.
For all that I blamed her for giving in to her overactive mind, I was the one who worried too much. Who was overprotective. Who couldn't handle the thought of her suffering, even only slightly. She was the one who alerted me to possibilities, her mind skittering from one thing to the next even as she stayed my rock.
The truth was, without me, Alayna was still brilliant and clever and lovely and big-hearted and enough.
But without her, I was nothing.
It was quite the delight to be back in Hudson and Alayna world once again. So much has changed between these two volatile and endearing characters, yet a lot is still the same. They still thrive off the fixation and control. But they've learned to harness both of their vices into a better life for their family...most of the time. Sometimes their tendencies get the better of them, but that's when the seek shelter in each other. Or even look to each other to shock them back to their reality. Hudson and Alayna may be a little twisty, but they are the best versions of themselves when they're together. Fixed Forever proved that in vivid detail. These two couldn't be the thriving parents, the insatiable couple, the ultimate power duo without each other. They have made questionable, regretful, and shameful decisions in the past, who hasn't, really? But Fixed Forever shows them recognizing their pasts, continuing to make some of the same errors, but finding that they CAN live and make mistakes, without going down the rabbit hole of destruction. They have anchors now, and when they begin to spiral they come back so much faster.
That's the good of Fixed Forever. The bad... and by bad I mean the conflict, not the negative of the story, because let's face it there is no negative to this book. The bad, though, was unexpected and I could not figure out the answer! It was mind-boggling. And though I had several guesses, none of them were correct, which steamed me up! But that's a mark of a fantastic book.
However, this time around for Hudson and Alayna it wasn't their fixation on something, or their control that created the problems. No, it was a threat no one could have seen coming. A threat that got too close to business, to close to them, to their family, to everything.
I loved seeing Hudson and Alayna years into the future and their family. It made my heart happy. But it wasn't all rainbows, and unicorns. Their problems very much struck a reality chord. But that realism is what makes Hudson and Alayna who they are. That's why I fell in love with them in the first place. They're a perfectly imperfect couple.
The epilogue... sigh. Hudson is just wonderful and swoony. It was ridiculously sweet.
I will say, the after ending has me feeling ALL sorts of ways. But what I can conclude, is that I can't wait for that to manifest into it's own thing... And on that note, I'll leave you with my final thought: buy this book, devour this book, you will not be sorry!
Happy Reading!
*ARC provided by the author in exchange for an honest review*
With over 1 million books sold, Laurelin Paige is the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling Author of the Fixed Trilogy. She's a sucker for a good romance and gets giddy anytime there's kissing, much to the embarrassment of her three daughters. Her husband doesn't seem to complain, however. When she isn't reading or writing sexy stories, she's probably singing, watching Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead, or dreaming of Michael Fassbender. She's also a proud member of Mensa International though she doesn't do anything with the organization except use it as material for her bio.
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