In this deeply emotional entry of the Bergman Brothers series, Freya and Aiden grapple with personal and marital challenges amid a family holiday in Hawaii. Chloe Liese portrays their struggles with intimacy, mental health, and familial expectations with poignancy and depth, offering a story that resonates with laughter and tears. While Ever After Always by Chloe Liese can be read as a standalone, the narrative’s richness is enhanced by familiarity with the series, highlighting both its strength and potential barrier for new readers.
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Ever After Always by Chloe Liese
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
Bergman Brothers #3
January 2, 2024
Read this if you want:
- Marriage in trouble
- Emotional stories
- Mental health representation
A heart-warming story of two people working on their marriage.
Freya and Aiden have been together for over a decade, but now things aren’t so good for them. Aiden is quiet and withdrawn and Freya feels like he’s never around. All Aiden wants to do is make his wife happy, but he’s not sure he can provide for their family well enough if they have a baby. The pressure is making his anxiety the worst it has ever been. Then just as they decide to start marriage counseling, Freya and Aiden are thrown into a Bergman family Hawaiian holiday. Will this be an opportunity for them to get their spark back or will it be the final straw that destroys their marriage?
The Bergman Brothers series (or in this case, a Bergman sister with Freya) is full of deeply emotional stories with flawed characters facing challenges. Aiden faces his anxiety and throws himself into his relentless pursuit of success to counteract his difficult childhood, and Freya sometimes struggles to understand him with her own very different upbringing. Chloe Liese does a great job of making it both painful to read about the couple struggling but also making you feel their love so strongly even when they are mad at one another. This book has a major emotional impact. I definitely laughed and teared up and really felt so many things along with the characters.
To me, I think one of the biggest strengths of this book, but also a potential drawback for newer Chloe Liese fans, is that Freya and Aiden are extremely embedded in the lives of their family members. This means that you really need to have read the previous books in the series to fully understand this story, even though it can technically be read as a standalone. The emotional impact will be so much less without the additional context.
Overall, I always recommend Bergman Brothers books, and this one is no exception. The additional epilogue from this new edition adds even more to the story and I love seeing another snippet of Freya and Aiden’s day-to-day life. As should already be clear, this is not necessarily an easy, light-hearted book, so definitely read the content warnings at the beginning, but it is so good and impactful.
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