Review: Adore by Nina Lane (Spiral of Bliss #4)

Note: This ARC was provided by InkSlinger PR in exchange for an honest review.

"Hey, beauty." His voice is a warm, gentle current sliding right around my heart.

"Hi, professor." I reach out to put my hand on his chest. "You came back."

"I will always come back to you."

Adore is the fourth and latest novel in the on-going love and life story of husband and wife Dean and Olivia West found in the pages of Spiral of Bliss, author Nina Lane's beautifully written series. I went into this series reading all the available books, and I did realize that the third book was originally the series ender. Finding out what happens to Dean and Liv after they had Nicholas, though, appealed to my far more curious side, and what we get here is a couple that have become parents while being a tenured professor and business owner, respectively, but seem to have put aside their being spouses too. Did I feel the same kind of frustration here that I did in the first three books? No, because what I experienced was a different kind of frustration, and most of it had to do with Liv and her misguided idea that she could do everything.

You know what they say about the terrible twos? Well, it seems that Nicholas West has bouts of it and Liv and Dean learn that parenting can have them feeling both fulfilled and weary. Liv's Wonderland Café is doing quite well but she's taking in more and more responsibilities, both with the business and her volunteering, leaving little to no time at all for her husband. On the other hand, Dean has more than made a name for himself in his field of specialization, leading to an opportunity that he never dreamed possible but one that he knows he needs to say "no" to even though he wants to consider it being a viable option. There are times that I felt that Dean created a monster of sorts by never refusing anything and everything Liv asked for and I couldn't help but think that Liv was acting rather selfishly when it came to the job offer.

Dean and Liv have been together as a couple for nearly a decade at this point in the series, and they've been through a great deal, coming out on the other side stronger than they once were. But they're still fallible and they still have missteps because, after all, they're human. The book made me pause and consider how different they were at the beginning of their relationship and how they are now. They found the one person they wanted to spend the rest of their lives, but they also seemed to have lost a part of themselves along the way, albeit we saw that happening to Liv earlier on in the series. Dean has always put his wife first because their family is what mattered most, but in doing so, what happens to his dreams and wants? Can a couple, even one like the Wests, have it all or will they learn the art of marital compromise?

I've thoroughly enjoyed the Spiral of Bliss series and am going through a bit of a series hangover at the moment. There's a fifth full-length novel, Always, in the offing and based on the short blurb, I'm already formulating a variety of gut-wrenching scenarios in my head (the worst one being either Dean or Liv getting a life-threatening medical diagnosis). But while I'm waiting for book five's release, I'm going to go ahead and add Break the Sky, the spin-off story of Archer West and Kelsey March, to my to-be-read list (because had I known about it earlier, I would have made a point of reading it before going into Adore). I'll also be checking out the author's short story in the For the First Time anthology entitled Advent, which is about Dean and Liv's first Christmas together. Till then, check out Adore, which I'm giving five stars to. ♥

Date Read: 12 February 2016

Learn more about Nina Lane.

Purchase Adore on Amazon | B&N | Kobo.