A review by eesh25
Madly by Ruthie Knox

4.0

I've been waiting for this book to come out for a long time. And not necessarily because of the first book. I liked [book:Truly|18481904], but this wait was more due to the author, who I love.

Ruthie Knox has the most brilliant style of prose that I absolutely adore. It's very clever, involves a lot of reading-between-the-lines, and is such that even the simplest lines carry so much meaning...

For example, a line as simple as "Ben wasn't cooking", which doesn't seem like it would mean much at all, in the context, it does. It signifies something that you would know if you'd read the book. And the novel is packed with simple yet meaningful lines. Each sentence is so deliberate, and constructed to insinuate instead of straight up telling us. And it's so witty, too. I missed the writing style.

As for the book, I really liked it. The main characters is Allie, who follows her mother to New York and sees her flirting with another man in a bar. There she meets Winston (the utter jackass from About Last Night) and involves him in her harebrained scheme to "fix" her family... somehow. She doesn't actually have much of a plan.

Allie, you see, has a life motto and it's 'don't think'. Personally, the worst motto I've ever heard of. And it doesn't really work. She always manages to mess things up. She does great with her business, but when it comes to her personal life, she's a runner. She jumps into situations and avoids thinking, and when everything goes to hell, she tries to pretend thing are fine and jumps into other situations hoping everything will just work out anyway. She's basically a train wreck when it comes to her personal life and she's also exactly the kind of characters I usually hate.

But I don't hate her. Partly because she has her heart in the right place and always has good intentions (just little guidance would go so far with her) and partly because Ruthie Knox is just really fricking good at writing messy characters who are somehow not as annoying as they should be.

As for her romantic interest; Winston is very different from who he was in the previous book, in a good way. He's regretful of his actions, he's nice, caring, sensible, and exactly right for Allie. Because Allie really needs someone mature in her life who can calm her down in her moments of messy-ness and provide some guidance. She needs someone to balance her crazy side and Winston is it. They work really well together.

My highlight of the book, though, was Ben. I was very suprised by that. But there was this one chapter that I go into detail about, and Ben was in it and he was perfect. Love him and his frowney, intimidating self.

Overall, I really enjoyed the read. The story was great, the prose I loved, and the characters were a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the last book, Completely.