Hard Love was the absolute perfect conclusion to Meredith Wild’s captivating and utterly phenomenal Hacker Series. I couldn’t have asked for a better ending book for Blake and Erica and their breathtakingly emotional love story. This series is one of my all-time favorites, and what Meredith Wild gave me in each of these books, but especially in Hard Love, left me in true literary awe. As I sit here writing this review, I still can’t believe that Blake and Erica’s story is really over, but what I got from those two dynamic characters in this book is something I will never forget.
Meredith Wild weaves her distinctive writing magic once again in a gripping story that has you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end, has you feeling and fully experiencing every thoughtfully crafted emotion and feeling, and has you realizing once again why Blake and Erica’s journey together is beautiful, authentic, and utterly unforgettable to say the least.
Hard Love is an enthralling, superbly intense, and emotionally breathtaking read that I loved every word of. It’s a beautiful love story, brimming with raw, vulnerable, consuming love that’s depth truly has no boundaries. While reading Hard Love you will breathe in the fierce love that Blake and Erica share, and that love will fill you. It will melt and simultaneously ignite you. It will mesmerize you with every word, and have you feeling every ounce of this book in the most remarkable way. There is something so special and wonderful about the love that Blake and Erica share, and Meredith Wild gives you one last outstanding chapter to relish in all of that love.
The entire time I was reading Hard Love, I was enraptured with Blake and Erica and what they were going through in this story. I felt for them. I loved them so fiercely, and I connected to them on such a real level because of how fantastically Meredith Wild creates and captures their characters. I just got them one hundred percent. I understood them, their thoughts and feelings, their desires, their flaws, and everything that made them the wonderfully distinctive characters that they are.
The events of Hard Love are engaging in every way, and Erica and Blake are faced with one last fight, and one last hurdle to overcome in order to be together. There were so many times while reading where I didn’t know where the next page would take these two, and Hard Love had so many fantastically shocking moments that just pulled me in all the more. The many intense and varied events brought out so much in their characters, and truly allowed me to understand them on completely new level. Obviously I’ve known their characters since Hardwired, and I’ve had the phenomenal chance to see them evolve over the course of the series, but in Hard Love you really get them.
You get them at their most vulnerable at times, and at their fiercest at others. You get the real, honest and raw them, and getting them on that level is spectacular. That allows you such an immense understanding of their characters, their motives, and just how far they will go to be with one another. It brings out such an exceptional level of fight and determination and will power from them both that will have you feeling them every single breathtaking step of the way. Having that well rounded and magnificently crafted understanding of them sets this chapter of their story in a league of its own.
In Hard Love you get to see Erica’s sheer strength and fight come out full force once again. There is such a power to her character, such a determination that defines her in the best way, and a stubbornness that makes you smile, but really exemplifies so much about her. The level of fight Erica has is remarkable, and is just one of the many things I love about her character because she never gives up, she never stops giving it her all, and she never stops fighting for the love that she and Blake share. The events of Hard Love definitely throw her for a bit of a loop in more ways than one, but through it all Erica keeps trying with all her might to get her and Blake to the place they both want to be. I heart that girl something fierce for her unwavering fierceness, and she is hands down one of my favorite female characters ever.
Blake Landon is one of the most intense and dynamic characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. There is such a force and presence to him that just emanates from these books. You feel that fully once again in Hard Love, but what was even more amazing in this book was that you got to see an entirely new side to Blake. You get to see a more vulnerable side, a more raw and visceral side that just pulls at your heart again and again. You really get to see how his past is affecting his present and future, and what that all adds to the story. There are so many remarkable layers to his character, and you get to delve heart first into each and every one of them, allowing you the phenomenal opportunity to see Blake Landon in a way you’ve never seen him before. He’s still the Blake you know and love, but in this chapter of the story you get more of him, and that more is the best.
Along with Blake and Erica, you get one last chance to spend time with the wonderfully distinctive supporting characters that help make this series the spectacular thing that it is. I loved getting to spend time with each and every one of them, even the ones who I sometimes wish I could shake for the things they were doing. They added a magnificent layer to everything that I was reading, and their interactions with Blake and Erica had me feeling and thinking and experiencing so much. I loved each and every one of them for different reasons, but mostly I loved them all because they were them through and through, they brought so much to the story, and they brought out so many immense and incredibly immense things from Blake and Erica. I’ve also got my fingers crossed that at some point in the future we’ll get a little bit more from some of them, because they truly were something else.
One of the many reasons Meredith Wild is a top favorite author of mine is because she creates and evokes so much varied, vibrant, and exceptionally crafted emotion and feeling in her writing that you whole heartedly experience. In Hard Love Meredith Wild gave me so many different moments with Blake and Erica that had my heart melting from all the feels and the depth behind them, had my heart racing from the shocking and riveting turn of events, had it squeezing like crazy at all that they went through, and certainly had it filling with the immense level of love and desire and passion being shared between them. While reading this book, I laughed and I cried, I also smiled more times than I could count, while thinking and wondering so much, and through it all I felt.
I felt the immense level of love and trust that Blake and Erica had for one another. I felt what it was like for them to go through everything that came there way. I felt their fierce level of fight and determination they both had to end up exactly where they wanted to be. I felt and experienced it all because Meredith Wild’s magnificent writing allowed me to feel every single amazing word of what I was reading.
Like I said, Hard Love is the perfect conclusion to this series. While reading this book everything just felt very full-circle and extremely meaningful. Erica and Blake’s hard fought journey together culminates in this extraordinary book, and Meredith Wild hit is out of the park with what she gives you from them as their story epically concludes. Through everything that you read you realize how far these characters have come and evolved from where they started, what it is that they share truly offer one another, the immense level of trust they fought to have, and why their love is so worth fighting for with everything that they’ve got. Hard Love is Blake and Erica and their insurmountable love, and it honestly doesn’t get much better than what you get from them in this book.
I could honestly continue on for with so many more words about how much I loved Hard Love (Hacker Series #5) by Meredith Wild, and why this series will remain a favorite of mine forever. The moment I finished this book, in the wee hours of the morning I might add, I cried. Not because I was sad or because I was so exhausted, but because I realized fully in that moment when it was all over, how much I literally got from Blake and Erica. I got them, who they became individually and together, I got all of their fight and the meaning behind everything they did and said and felt, but most of all I got their love. Their breathtakingly beautiful love that shows the amazing things that can really happen when two people take a risk, throw that caution to the wind, and give themselves fully to another person.
Feeling that so completely and meaningfully after reading Hard Love was nothing short of superb to experience, and is one of the many reasons The Hacker Series is one of the best series I’ve ever read. What you get from this fantastic book, these brilliant characters, and this phenomenal series is every positive adjective under the sun rolled into one extraordinary book that I guarantee will leave you fully satisfied, and in literal awe of every wondrous thing that it so fantastically gave you.