Making it Last (2013) (novella)Ruthie Knox
Grade: A-
Genre: contemporary romance
Sex scenes: hot
Source: NetGalley
Camelot series: (1) How to Misbehave, (2) Along Came Trouble, (3) Flirting with Disaster, (4) Making it Last
Amber Mazzara has been married for ten years, loves her three kids to pieces, but has had enough. After ten years of constantly having to look after at least one child, all her boys are now in school, leaving her bereft as she waits at home for them to finish school; her husband Tony is forced to travel to where the work is as the housing market has yet to pick up, and Amber feels like she’s losing herself.
A family trip to Jamaica is the last straw. They were barely
able to afford this first family holiday in years, but they weren’t about to
miss Amber’s brother’s wedding. Amber didn’t get that tan, massage or drinks
with little floating umbrellas. Instead, she had to keep an eye on her
hyperactive kids who deemed themselves too old for the activities run by the
resort while Tony took endless calls, managing a build despite while being on
holiday.
When Amber and Tony find themselves in Jamaica without the
kids in tow, they have the opportunity to reconnect and save their marriage in
order to make it last …
This was heart-wrenching, gritty and painfully honest. I
can’t relate to Amber’s situation at all, but it felt so personal and almost
too intrusive in its intimacy. Along Came Trouble and Flirting with Disaster
had alluded to Amber and Tony’s troubles, but there had never been enough to
suggest that their marriage was on the brink of disaster. All protagonists have
their problems, but I’ve never seen them exposed to this extent, for the world
to see. After watching two couples find their happy ever after in quick
succession, this is a huge change in direction and really very clever. It’s not
pretty, but Ms Knox has dared to show us the reality: that happy ever after
doesn’t come with no strings attached, and you need to work hard to keep it. I
admire her for that.
Not that I’m not glad that the characters all have their
happy ending, but this does seem to be the end of the Camelot series. I’ve
still yet to read Amber and Tony’s first story, which I’ll get onto soon, and I
think I’m going to like the comparisons and contrasts between the people that
they were and the people that they’ve become. I always enjoy epilogues because
when I find a good story, I never want it to end, but rarely do you get to
revisit characters and discover this much about what has happened since you
last saw them.
This was a thoughtful book. I imagine very difficult to
write, since so much of it is so deeply personal, and not quite the
champagne-and-roses you expect of a romance novel. It takes guts to write and
that’s one of the things that I admire most about this book, besides the story
itself. Not quite what I expected after two very mainstream (yet fantastic)
romance novels, and for that I only respect Ms Knox even more.
Image courtesy of Ruthie Knox
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