3 out of 4 stars
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Heartaches 3 features the conclusion of Anna and Rafe’s beautiful, but complicated, love story. In this final installment of the trilogy, H.M. Irwing successfully wraps up all loose ends, providing a proper culmination to the roller coaster of emotions that readers are bound to feel through the Heartaches series.
Just a brief reminder: Please note that if you are not into mature scenes, especially sex and BDSM, it is best you avoid this book.
Heartaches 3 narrates the story of how Anna, Rafe and their newfound friend, Suzi, tries to sabotage the wedding of Rafe’s Aunt Bella to the evil Peter. More importantly, this book tackles the most awaited final battle between our lovers and their drug dealing enemies who once ruined their lives.
Although the grander scheme of drugs involves more action, what I like the most in this third book is the resolution given to the different relationships. Specifically, I love the closure between Anna and Matt—Anna’s first love who later became one of her sexual abusers. The author shedding light on the thoughts of some antagonists—namely, Matt and Brian—also adds a new dimension to the story. It seems the author is trying to impart the idea that sometimes, in heinous crimes such as rape, it’s not only the victim who is scarred forever. Even the perpetrators, who shed a part of their humanity by doing such crimes, will forever carry permanent, haunting imprints.
If you have read my review on Heartaches 2, you'd already know that as much as I love the author’s poetic narrative, I feel the second book fell short in terms of content. For me, nothing much happened in the second book. I also felt it ended prematurely. More important parts of the plot went to the third book. I now reiterate my conclusion in my Heartaches 2 review that perhaps Heartaches should have been better off as one book and not a series. I find that some moments in both Heartaches 2 and 3 seem dull and could have been omitted for the sake of better story pacing. Both books are also very short, with the third book only around 100 pages long.
Grammar-wise, there are still some typos here and there, but these are very minor and not really distracting.
Overall, I give Heartaches 3 a 3 out of 4. I cannot say that I liked all the endings the author provided for all the characters. However, it is nice to read a conclusive ending for a story that would really lose you into entangled strings of drama, and make you swim into a muddle of human sentiments and principles that you would love to ponder on.
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Heartaches 3
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