Blurb:
Tessa and Hardin have defied all the odds, but will they get their fairy tale ending?
After Ever Happy.
Life will never be the same.
Tessa and Hardin have had enough surprises. Their bond is stronger than ever, but every new challenge they face shakes their foundation – and Hardin’s impenetrable facade – to the core. As the shocking truth about each of their families emerges, it’s clear the two lovers are not so different from each other. Tessa is no longer the sweet, simple, good girl she was when she met Hardin – any more than he is the cruel, moody boy she fell so hard for. Tessa understands all the troubling emotions brewing within Hardin, and she knows she’s the only one who can calm him when he erupts. He needs her. But the more layers of his past that come to light, the darker he grows, and the harder he pushes Tessa – and everyone else in his life – away. After all this time, Tessa’s not really sure if she really can save him – not without sacrificing herself. Is love worth losing her identity? She refuses to go down without a fight. But who is she really fighting for – Hardin or herself?
Rating: 4/5 stars
Side Notes:
- Genres: Contemporary Romance and Fiction
- Highly recommend for 16 years and above
- TW: Sexually graphic scenes, explicit language, Substance misuse
- Romance Tropes: Good Girl Bad Boy, Enemies to lovers
Book Quotes:
- “I saw the empty, sad girl smile for the sad boy who loves her with all of his broken soul.”
- “You won’t know how lucky you are to be able to spend your life with the other half of your soul until you have to spend your life without them.”
- “You shouldn’t date someone if your heart is owned by someone else. It doesn’t work, trust me.”
- “It’s not so easy to walk away from someone when he has made his way into every cell, when he has taken over every thought, and he has been responsible for the best and worst feelings I’ve ever had. No one, not even the doubting part of me, can make me feel bad for loving passionately and hoping desperately that I could have that great love that I’ve read about in novels.”
- “I’m truly sorry that I ruined you,” I whisper into her hair as her breathing begins to show signs of sleep. “Me, too,” she breathes, and regret fills in the little spaces between us as she drifts off.”
- “I want him to look in the mirror and smile, not scowl. I need him to not think of himself as a monster. I need him to see the real him, because if he doesn’t pull himself out of the villain role, it will destroy him, and I’ll just be left with ashes. I just needed to get it all out because I feel like I’m drowning, and it’s hard to keep myself above water, especially when I’m fighting against the current to save him rather than myself.”
- “Seriously, it’s okay to be sad, but if you let sadness control your life, you’ll never have one.”
- “It’s impossible to change people who have their mind set on who they are.”
- “After everything, we made it. Whatever the hell our souls are made of, they are the same.”
- “He wants her to know that she was his savior and that he could never repay her for everything she has done for him, and that he loves her with his entire soul and nothing will ever change that. He wants to remind her that whatever their souls are made of, his and hers are the same. Their favorite novel said it best.”
- “I couldn’t comprehend the magnetic pull that could be felt. I never understood the way love overpowers common sense and passion overtakes logic, or how unnerving it is that no one else really knows how you feel—no one can judge me for being weak or stupid, no one can put me down for the way I feel.”
- “There’s always another day, there’s always a way to make up for the shit you’ve done and the people you’ve hurt, and there is always someone who loves you, even when you feel like you’re completely alone and you’re just out there floating along, waiting for the next disappointment. There is always something better to come.”
- “We needed to be able to stand alone before we could stand together, and I’m so thankful that we made it through the darkness, the fighting, the pain, and emerged hand in hand, stronger than ever.”
- “The worst part of being okay is that okay is far from happy. Okay is that gray space in the middle where you can wake up each day and carry on with your life, even laugh and smile often, but okay isn’t joy. Okay isn’t looking forward to each second of your day, and okay isn’t getting the most out of life. Being okay is what most people settle for, myself included, and we pretend that okay is fine, when we actually hate it, and we spend the majority of our time waiting to break out of just being okay. He gave me a taste of how great life can be outside of okay, and I’ve missed it ever since. I’ve been okay for a long time, and I’m not sure how to get out of it now, but I hope for the day that I can say I’m great instead of I’m okay.”
- “I guess that’s the thing about betrayal; it holds no prejudice and preys on those who neither see it coming nor deserve it.”
- “no matter how hard you try. They have to want it as bad as you do or there is no hope.”
- “Her laugh, her laugh was the sound that brought him out of the darkness and into the light. Her laugh dragged him, by his damn collar, through the bullshit clouding his mind and infecting his thoughts.”
- “There was so many things I should have said, could have said, and sure as hell would have said if I had known my days in heaven were numbered. Had I know that I would be cast out so soon, I would have worshipped her the way she deserves.”
- “I love him, lord knows that I love this man; through all the separations, through all the chaos, he has crawled into my soul and marked it as his, never to be forgotten. I couldn’t have if I tries, and I did try.”
- “Maybe some people only want to read about happiness and cliche love stories, but there are millions of people who aren’t perfect and have been through shit in their lives, and maybe they want to connect with it? Maybe they would see some of themselves in me, and, hell. Hell, maybe someone could learn something from my mistakes, and ours.”
- “Romance is overrated, realism it is.”
- “Even in the midst of the inevitable tragedy that was our relationship, I would never take a second of it back. I wouldn’t do it again, but I dont’s regret a moment I spend with him”
- “Pain isn’t remotely kind in that way: pain wants its promised pound of flesh, ounce for ounce. It won’t settle until you’re left with nothing but a flaky shell of who you were. The burn of betrayal and the sting of rejectionhurt, but nothing comapres to the pain of being empty. nothing hurts worse than not hurting at all, and that that make no sense and perfect sense at the same time convinces me i’m goin fucking crazy.”
- “And the irony is that as soon as he finally had something, someone worth living for, he’s gone. Like he couldn’t handle that much goodness.”
- “This is the type of love story that deals with real fucking problems. It’s a story about forgiveness and unconditional love, and it shows how much a person can change, really change, if they try hard enough. It’s the type of story that proves that anything is fucking possible when it comes to self-recovery. It shows that if you have someone to lean on, someone who loves you and doesn’t give up on you, you can find your way out of the darkness. It shows that no matter what type of parents you had, or addictions you were faced with, you can overcome anything that stands in your way and become a better person. That’s the type of story After is.”
- “When you love people, you don’t let them destroy you along with themselves, you don’t allow them to drag you through the mud. You try to help them, try to save them, but the moment that your love is one-sided or selfish, if you keep trying, you are a fool.”
- “It shows that no matter what type of parents you had, or addictions you were faced with, you can overcome anything that stands in your way and become a better person.”
- “What if people don’t like it? What if they don’t even take the chance to read it, but they hate us for what’s inside of it?”
- “The man who hates the world is most loved by it”
- “people can only change themselves, no matter how hard you try. They have to want it as bad as you do or there is no hope.”
- “The worst part of being okay is that okay is far from happy.”
- “He wants to remind her that whatever their souls are made of, his and hers are the same. Their favorite novel said it best.”
- “Maybe I’m in shock after all. Shock isn’t a bad place, though. I’d like to stay here as long as I can. It hurts less.”
- “It’s impossible to change people who have their mind set on who they are. You can’t support them enough to make up for their low expectation, and you can’t love them enough to make up for the hate they feel for themselves. It’s a losing battle, and finally after all this time, I am ready to surrender.”
- “I’m taken, absolutely consumed, by seeing him again, thrown back into a world where I fought hard in and lost nearly every battle that was thrown my way, only to leave withouth the one thing that I was fighting for: him.”
- “Her mouth taste like home to me, and I’ve been away from home”
- “I don’t know where to go, what to do next, but I do know that holding on to something that was never mine will only hurt more.”
- “Men are assholes. Every single one of them.” “But truth be told, women are assholes, too, so the only way for it to work is if you find an asshole you can deal with. One that makes you a little of an asshole.”