“She was tragedy. She was joy. She was Texas.”

Stepping into the fairy tale can be difficult if the past still weighs heavy and if other dreams are still clamoring to be heard. When having it all does not seem to be an option, how do you choose? For Alex Wilde, wedding bells in 2011 signal a major deviation in her meticulously planned life, and honeymooning with her husband, Ian Devall, is a long, enchanting dance on shifting sand. But when the real world beckons and pulls them away from paradise, both Ian and Alex are suddenly faced with difficult decisions and life-changing choices. 

Ever Wilde is book three in the Alex Wilde series, and a major portion of the story is a backward trek to the summer before Alex’s senior year of high school in 1997, filled with reckless romance and frivolous fun before the final stretch into adulthood and responsibilities. Unfortunately, Alex also finds heartbreak and a deadly attack that remains a mystery for years. When Alex returns to Texas in 2011, she is looking to clear her head and find a way to link her purpose as a pediatric doctor with her new life as the wife of an incredibly wealthy man carrying a full agenda of responsibilities. 

HK Jacobs is an exceptional novelist who knows how to characterize personalities to their fullest, allowing them to blossom and deepen across every page and throughout the entire series. After the highly dramatic events in Becoming Wilde, Alex and Ian simply want to melt into marital bliss but find themselves vying for equal footing in a relationship knitted together by vastly different cultural and familial upbringings. As various doors of opportunity open and close, can these two lovebirds find a place of ambition that they can share, or must Alex bend to the point of breaking in a neatly designated corner of Ian’s affluent world that feels both too big and too small?  

“When did her dreams become decisions? When did her decisions become new dreams? At what point had the momentum of life sent her aloft into the stratosphere to meet the next unexpected gust of wind?” 

The pacing of Ever Wilde is fairly quick, and the lengthy backtrack into Alex’s past is in no way intrusive. In fact, this structure has the literary elements of an embedded narrative, or story within a story, with both stories being equally conclusive and entertaining. The themes of friendship and purpose loom large in this well-constructed series, culminating in Ever Wilde as Alex confronts her past so that she can embrace her future. Sometimes the internal scars of abuse shut doors that were never meant to close, and finding the courage to knock the rust off and accept the healing truth will often unfurl new hopes and dreams that can inevitably touch many more lives than just your own. HK Jacobs presents these universal themes in extraordinary style, offering a swath of literary excellence within a romantic fiction filled with passion, booze, unbreakable friendship, and strong tendrils of everlasting love.  

The ending of Ever Wilde is a fireworks display of long-buried emotions and respect and retribution for the past. Dr. Alexandra Wilde has always been in her element in the pediatric ICU, but she has finally lassoed and secured her rightful place as a daughter and friend in Texas, as a wife and honorary aunt in London, and as a doctor and humanitarian on the global stage. Nothing and no one will ever stop her wild, unfettered dream to have it all— love, dignity, and purpose—in true fairy tale fashion.