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A review by jackiehorne
Completely by Ruthie Knox
4.0
ARC courtesy of Netgalley
3.5 Thirty-nine year old Rosemary Chamberlain [ex-wife of Winston, the hero of the previous book in Knox's New York series] is tired of being the expensive decorative paper on someone else's wall. To regain her sense of self post-divorce, she's decided to live out her pre-marriage dreams, joining an all-woman expedition to scale the world's seven largest mountains and writing a book about the experience. But shock, not empowerment, sets in after an avalanche buries the base camp, killing several of Rosemary's friends and acquaintances.
Rosemary is a take-charge, cool-headed Brit, so no one realizes how much she is reeling emotionally in the aftermath of the natural disaster—no one except Kalden Beckett, one of the "ice doctors" guiding Rosemary's party. The two end up in a hotel together, drowning their shock and fear by eating, drinking, and engaging in life-affirming sex. Needless to say, such behavior is pretty shocking for self-contained Rosemary. It's less shocking for for thirty-two year-old Kal, the son of a famed British mountain climber and the first Sherpa woman to reach Everest's peak. Kal has been drifting after his ambitious plans to improve the environmental impact of climbers on Everest and simultaneously help improve the working conditions of the Sherpa run into major red tape, and gets sucked into her orbit, equally attracted by the strength of Rosemary's drive and by his unexpectedly protective feelings for the icy "princess" when she's in the midst of a major melt-down.
Yet their night together is not the end of their relationship; both Rosemary and Kal's families live in New York, and events lead them to fly there together to reunite with kith and kin. But even after they arrive in the States, their shared experience of trauma keeps drawing them together, these two very different people. But their differences prove surprisingly complimentary.
Though the story takes place over the course of only five days, the intensity of the events of those five days makes it plausible that such a deep connection could be forged between Kal and Rosemary. Knox's stories are always ideologically rich, and I loved the social justice aspects of this one, as well as signs of Knox's more characteristic feminist concerns (Rosemary's frustrations as a wallpaper wife; her goal of writing a book about women doing something adventurous and extraordinary; her questioning of her commitment to that goal in the wake of the avalanche; the stories of the first female Sherpa climbers; Rosemary's fraught relationship with her college-aged daughter). And Rosemary—brusque, witty, self-contained, very aware of her privilege but not cowardly about using it, either—is an unusual heroine for a romance novel, one whom I really enjoyed reading about.
Two things didn't work for me: first, the subplot about the relationship between Rosemary and her angry daughter Beatrice did not seem clearly explained or explored, and it seemed to resolve itself without any discussion or reconciliation between the two by book's end. Second, the back-and-forthing between Kal and Rosemary about the state of their relationship towards the end of the book felt way too rushed; Rosemary's "we're not willing to give it our all" fears come out of nowhere, and then both she and Kal swing to the precise opposite, "yes, we're completely committed," with neck-wrenching rapidity. Wish Knox had given these two a bit more time than five days to work through their really complex emotions for one another, and to navigate their own character arcs.
But I'd buy the book if I had to, just to read that scene between Rosemary and the New York editor—spot-on painfully funny!
3.5 Thirty-nine year old Rosemary Chamberlain [ex-wife of Winston, the hero of the previous book in Knox's New York series] is tired of being the expensive decorative paper on someone else's wall. To regain her sense of self post-divorce, she's decided to live out her pre-marriage dreams, joining an all-woman expedition to scale the world's seven largest mountains and writing a book about the experience. But shock, not empowerment, sets in after an avalanche buries the base camp, killing several of Rosemary's friends and acquaintances.
Rosemary is a take-charge, cool-headed Brit, so no one realizes how much she is reeling emotionally in the aftermath of the natural disaster—no one except Kalden Beckett, one of the "ice doctors" guiding Rosemary's party. The two end up in a hotel together, drowning their shock and fear by eating, drinking, and engaging in life-affirming sex. Needless to say, such behavior is pretty shocking for self-contained Rosemary. It's less shocking for for thirty-two year-old Kal, the son of a famed British mountain climber and the first Sherpa woman to reach Everest's peak. Kal has been drifting after his ambitious plans to improve the environmental impact of climbers on Everest and simultaneously help improve the working conditions of the Sherpa run into major red tape, and gets sucked into her orbit, equally attracted by the strength of Rosemary's drive and by his unexpectedly protective feelings for the icy "princess" when she's in the midst of a major melt-down.
Yet their night together is not the end of their relationship; both Rosemary and Kal's families live in New York, and events lead them to fly there together to reunite with kith and kin. But even after they arrive in the States, their shared experience of trauma keeps drawing them together, these two very different people. But their differences prove surprisingly complimentary.
Though the story takes place over the course of only five days, the intensity of the events of those five days makes it plausible that such a deep connection could be forged between Kal and Rosemary. Knox's stories are always ideologically rich, and I loved the social justice aspects of this one, as well as signs of Knox's more characteristic feminist concerns (Rosemary's frustrations as a wallpaper wife; her goal of writing a book about women doing something adventurous and extraordinary; her questioning of her commitment to that goal in the wake of the avalanche; the stories of the first female Sherpa climbers; Rosemary's fraught relationship with her college-aged daughter). And Rosemary—brusque, witty, self-contained, very aware of her privilege but not cowardly about using it, either—is an unusual heroine for a romance novel, one whom I really enjoyed reading about.
Two things didn't work for me: first, the subplot about the relationship between Rosemary and her angry daughter Beatrice did not seem clearly explained or explored, and it seemed to resolve itself without any discussion or reconciliation between the two by book's end. Second, the back-and-forthing between Kal and Rosemary about the state of their relationship towards the end of the book felt way too rushed; Rosemary's "we're not willing to give it our all" fears come out of nowhere, and then both she and Kal swing to the precise opposite, "yes, we're completely committed," with neck-wrenching rapidity. Wish Knox had given these two a bit more time than five days to work through their really complex emotions for one another, and to navigate their own character arcs.
But I'd buy the book if I had to, just to read that scene between Rosemary and the New York editor—spot-on painfully funny!