Hardline by Meredith Wild Release Date: June 10, 2014 Publisher: Forever Book #3 in the Hacker series Number of pages: 284 Kindle Edition Source: MCL Contemporary Romance/New Adult M/F Rating: XXX Read 3/25/18 to 3/27/18
I’ve been loving this series, but I’ll admit I had trouble getting into this part of the story…at first. To be completely honest, I was having an overall feeling of ennui in my day-to-day life and I kept wondering, as I was reading, if my real life was seeping into my reading life. You know how that is; sometimes you’re just not in the right head space for a certain story. Well, I either got over it or the story picked up because I had a much easier time with this story in the last half.
There is something that happens with Erica that is devastating. The aftermath of that incident really made me love Blake. He was kind of annoying me up until then in this one. I totally understand that there’s a dominance thing he wants/needs. I also get the jealousy thing. I still felt he went a bit overboard on the whole thing and could have handled things much more smoothly. I don’t doubt he still could have gotten what he wanted in the end while not being a jerk. Anyway, after Erica’s incident he is just amazing. As much as the other stories have had emotional upheaval, there was something about this one that gutted me even more than the previous two.
We do meet Erica’s stepdad, at least briefly, in this story. I’m curious if he’s going to play into the other books to come. I never quite understood (or forgave) his role in how things played out after Erica’s mom’s death.
If you haven’t read the other books in this series, it is my very strong opinion these are NOT stand-alone stories and must be read in order. It’s a great series and will keep you turning the pages so you won’t regret starting from the beginning.
