Saying goodbye to a beloved series is always a bitter sweet experience, but when a story has meant so much to you for so long and singlehandedly cemented your love of the New Adult genre, knowing we would not be revisiting these characters again feels like losing old friends. Thankfully, we leave them in a happy place, with the right ending and with the type of bond they desperately needed from the very first time they laid eyes on each other.
“What changed you? You’re so completely different than that guy I met back in June,” I said, smiling at his confused face.
Rush reached out and slipped his hand into my hair and tangled his fingers around the strands. “This sweet, determined, sexy-as-hell blonde walked into my life and gave me a reason to live.”
We watched Rush and Blaire, two young people who could not be any more different if they tried, fall in love hesitantly but irrevocably. All the odds were against them, from family history to upbringing, but they weathered the storms, put their differences aside and simply connected as two souls who craved unconditional love more than anything else in life. Their relationship has been an emotional affair from the very beginning, a constant struggle to reconcile their pasts with the future they wished to build together, their families playing a crucial role in that struggle. Even after they finally found their happy ending at the end of Never Too Far, a few loose ends were left up in the air, potential threats to their happily-ever-after, and in this final book we see them battling those to truly become each other’s family. This book is not the story of Rush and Blaire trying to stay together – we have seen them through enough drama to know they do not deserve any more of it thrown their way – this is the story of them learning to balance their new priorities in life and learning to put each other first, before anyone else.
“Do not ever speak to her that way again. … Don’t underestimate her importance. She’s mine. Respect that.” … Blaire came first. Always.
After a tumultuous start, the young couple is finally in a good place both emotionally as well as relationship-wise. They are engaged with a baby on the way, and their bond is a healthy combination of sexual attraction and genuine affection and regard for each other. They have become each other’s world, each other’s number one priority and the love of each other’s life. Rush has evolved from non-committal bad boy to devoted and doting fiancé, determined to make Blaire forget all the pain and sorrow that life has put her through. He is protective, affectionate, openly demonstrative and possessive of the woman he loves. His fear of losing Blaire again motivates him to become the type of man he needs to be for his future wife and their unborn child.
“The woman I got pregnant happens to be my heart. I’ll marry her and spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to make her smile.”
But Rush’s family is a permanent obstacle in their path to happiness, constantly putting him in situations where he is forced to choose between their needs and those of Blaire and their baby. With every step forward that he makes, his family’s drama makes him take one step back, where his actions or inactions end up making Blaire feel set aside and neglected.
“You’re afraid you and the baby won’t come first. You don’t want him to have to choose.”
This is in so many ways a book about Rush learning to reconcile his old life and his old priorities with his new ones. It is a book about choices in life and the consequences of those choices. It is a book about finding the type of love that makes you willing to do just about anything to keep it and knowing to never take it for granted.
One of the main differences between this book and the previous two is the amount of limelight that is put on some of the secondary characters. We get to meet some new ones, re-visit some old ones, and find out the possible directions that some of the spin-off series might take. While we somewhat reluctantly leave Rush and Blaire to their happily-ever-after, we find ourselves eagerly anticipating Woods and Della’s next book, Simple Perfection, as well as Grant’s two books, This One Chance and Take a Chance.
If you’ve loved Rush and Blaire as much as I have, you will get great satisfaction from the events in this book. This is the perfect conclusion to their story, with no unnecessary complications in their relationship just for the sake of drama – this is the happy ending they deserved all along. I have only one objection – what will I do without my Rush Crush now?
“How far is too far?” I asked
“It’s all too far. I want you right here beside me… forever.”
Excerpt
Kiro was shirtless and swinging his tattooed arms around with a cigarette between his fingers and a bottle of rum in his other hand. “What the ever loving f*ck is your problem? Hell, you got momma issues then go bitch at mother f*cking Georgianna. Why am I the one being dealt this crazy shit?” Kiro was yelling at Nan when I walked into the game room. A pair of black lace panties were on the pool table but the female I’d left him with a few hours earlier was nowhere to be seen. Small miracles.
“Rush! Do you hear him? He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care that he ignored me most of my life and do you know he has a daughter? Some uptight bitch that won’t even look at me.” Nan was still screaming.
I walked over to her and grabbed both her hands. “Take a couple deep breaths, Nan. You gotta calm down so we can all talk. You yelling isn’t gonna fix shit.”
She glared at me but did as I told her to. I waited until she’d taken two deep breaths before squeezing her hands. “Good. Now, go sit over there on that sofa and don’t talk. Let me talk. Okay?”
She frowned but nodded her head and walked over to the white leather sectional sofa that outlined two of the four walls in this room. Once she was seated I turned back around to look at Kiro. He was taking another long swig from the rum. The man needed to stop drinking and eat something. You could see his ribs. His fetish with leather went beyond furniture. He wore it too. The leather pants he had on were hanging on his tattooed hipbones.
“Can’t believe you got her to shut up for a whole damn minute,” Kiro muttered and put the cigarette back to his lips.
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