A review by cakt1991
With You Forever by Chloe Liese

emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 With You Forever is perhaps my least favorite in the series. There are still some very high highs here, but there’s also some low lows mixed in, making this a very polarizing reading experience for me. 

The character work, especially how it realistically portrays disability, is Liese’s consistent strength. While I don’t personally have ulcerative colitis, I appreciated seeing the rep on the page through Rooney’s character and how it impacts her daily life. Axel is also pretty solid, and while he’s not my favorite Bergman brother, I do appreciate seeing how he navigates the world as an autistic person, and drawing comparisons and contrasts to both my own experience and that of other autistic Liese characters.

The romance itself is where it fell apart for me. It seemed like it wanted to do too much with too little. Rooney and Axel are already into each other at the start, so the stakes feel pretty low to begin with, and the marriage of convenience itself didn’t feel super consequential for most of the book. And what it actually is is friends-with-benefits/no-strings sex, with a plan to eventually break up when they’re tired of each other, and in most cases, I’ve found that this type of dynamic is just not for me, because then the development is inevitably weighted to the sexual chemistry as opposed to establishing a deeper connection, and unfortunately, that felt very much the case here. 

But on the bright side, the family dynamics remain fun, almost stealing the show at times. I particularly loved some of the callbacks to earlier books, like my current favorite, Aiden and his romance reading. 

While I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the others, I’m clearly in the minority here. If contemporary marriage-of-convenience and friends-with-benefits are your favorite tropes, I think you’ll enjoy this one more than I did.