Never and Always by Anna Hackett Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Langston Hotels #3
Pages: 324
Published by Anna Hackett on May 12, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads
She’s a driven city girl who’s not staying long.
He’s a laid-back mountain man who’s never leaving.
Sparks are flying, and its high heels versus flannel shirts.
Piper
As the COO for Langston Hotels, I travel the world, but for the moment, I’m stuck in Windward, Colorado.
The town is small, has snow (shudder), and did I mention small? Once I finish renovations to our latest acquisition, I’m gone.
One man has become the bane of my existence: head of hotel maintenance, Everett Murray.
Does the man wear his uniform? No. He wears awful flannel shirts and jeans. So maybe the denim fits his long body like a glove, and the flannel stretches over wide shoulders, but that’s beside the point.
I need the hotel to meet Langston standards, I need this job done so I can move on, and I won’t let Everett slow me down.
Everett
It took a tragedy for me to realize Windward was home. I love my job. No endless hours, no stress, no missing out on what’s important.
Then Piper Ellis struts into the hotel in her tight skirts and high heels. The woman is a high-maintenance headache I don’t need.
But when her troublemaker brother blows into town, I see another side of Piper. The softer side she keeps hidden. When his troubles make her a target, I’m there to keep her safe.
She might be a city girl, and I’m a mountain man to the bone, but neither of us can fight the force of our attraction.
Still, I know that one day she’ll pack her designer suitcase and leave, because everyone knows opposites might attract, but they don’t stay together.
My Review:
One of the things that’s so much fun about this author’s series is the way that we know who’s romance is coming next even if we don’t know how they’re going to get to their HEA until the last page.
Which means that the end of the previous books in the Langston Hotels series, Before and After, foreshadowed the romance in this third book, Never and Always. (Also, now that I’m looking at the titles all together, Night and Day, Before and After, Never and Always, it seems as if all the titles represent an ‘opposites attract’ condition that fits right in with the story itself.
‘Big city’ girl Piper Ellis is the Chief Operating Officer for Langston Hotels. Not just one of the Langston Hotels, ALL of the Langston Hotels. Her home base is whichever Langston Hotel currently needs her attention the most. At the moment, it’s the Langston Windward, a winter wonderland of a place that anchors an entire community in the skiing paradise that is Colorado.
But Piper NEVER puts down roots. Upgrading the latest addition to the Langston empire to Langston standards is an interesting job, and the small town is growing on her, but she hates snow, isn’t remotely interested in winter sports, and is already looking forward to the next project. Hopefully someplace warm – or at least with more high end shopping and restaurant options.
Everett Murray, on the other hand, the Head of Hotel Maintenance at the Langston Windward, was born and raised in Windward. He may have left for a while for a high-powered engineering job in LA, but returned to take care of his dying mother – and realized that balance was more fulfilling AND it gave him more time for the people he cared for. People like his dad, his friends, and his community. Windward will ALWAYS be his home and he’s determined to make the most of it.
They shouldn’t get involved. Piper doesn’t do relationships and Everett doesn’t do casual. But the sparks they strike together are hot enough to practically set the hotel on fire. (Not that a fire doesn’t happen anyway!)
So when Piper’s ne’er do well brother turns up to get her involved in his dangerously messy life – and that danger follows him to Windward with a sharp knife and a need to make someone pay in blood, Piper needs the kind of help she’s NEVER been willing to accept.
Until it’s nearly too late. Too late for her heart for certain – unless Piper and Everett can find a way to meet in the middle between her NEVER and his ALWAYS.
Escape Rating B-: This is going to be a sadly mixed feelings review. Because for about 80% of the story I was REALLY enjoying it. I mean really, truly. Piper and Everett were a whole lot of fun to watch. They challenged each other, they snarked at each other. They both recognized that they had a lot of chemistry but that it would be problematic to indulge it.
Neither of them had the “I’m not worthys”. The issues between them felt real and difficult to reconcile unless one of them changed A LOT which they both recognized was neither a fair nor a realistic ask.
At the same time, while Piper is in danger, and she’s a bit blinkered about trying to save her brother and protect her mom and grandmother and still not fall for Chance’s terrible choices and chances, she does, however reluctantly, accept the help that she needs and does not run headlong into danger. She chafes at restrictions but she’s not too stupid to live.
The danger is VERY real because Chance is in way over his head with some very bad people in Vegas. He has a gambling addiction he refuses to admit to and still keeps expecting his family to bail him out. But none of them have the $100,000 he needs to get out of this jam and the pursuit is closing in.
Which leads to the problem I had with the story. It was so, so good until the very end, but it just didn’t stick the dismount. The dude chasing after Chance, that agent for the shark he owes that $100K to, is a psychopath who is in the enforcement game because he needs the violence and loves to cut his victims up. He’s also perfectly happy to cut up whatever collateral damage he can capture to torture his real target. Piper is in this dude’s sights. All of her protectors know that Corvo likes to dish out pain and doesn’t care who he dishes it out to as long as he gets his kicks. All of this knowledge is known and shared. They know Corvo doesn’t care about orders.
His evil is made so manifest to all involved and they all acknowledge that it’s real, that it exists and that Corvo is such a dangerous loose cannon that it does not ring true or plausible that just because they’ve made a deal with Corvo’s boss that Corvo will give up on literally taking a piece out of Piper. So they all, from Ro Langston (Night and Day) to Caden Castro (Before and After) to Alessio Rossi (borrowed from Las Vegas and the “retired” assassins of the Unsanctioned series), including Everett who is more or less a civilian in this context, have displayed that they know Corvo is dangerous with or without his boss’ sanction and YET they all act like the danger is over because they’ve made a deal with his boss.
Which is the point where I dropped out of the story like a rock. I wanted to scream because that made NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. It’s like they all knew the risks right up until the point where they stopped knowing the risks.
So, I loved the first 4/5ths of the book. I adored the happy ending. I’m intrigued by the tease we get for the next book in the series. But the resolution of the suspense part of the story did not work for me AT ALL.
I HOPE your reading mileage varies!
