Review: Thoughtful and tender -- the best novella I've read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 15, 2013
Ruthie Knox just keeps getting better and better.  "Making it Last" is something special: a novella with rich character development and a plot that delivers an emotional wallop.  Too often, romance novels rely on silly misunderstandings to keep the lovers apart.  In "Making it Last," it's the demands of three small kids and a tough job in a bad economy that do the trick - and it feels so real it hurts.  In her earlier novella, "How to Misbehave," Amber and Tony fall in love, but now it's fourteen years later, and as Knox explains in her author's note, "I wanted to tell a story about how life happens to love."Amber is a great wife and mom, but she's nearly dying under the weight of that love and the burden of constantly being on-call to give her all:  "They all wanted the same thing from her.  Be here for me to talk to.  Be here for me to grab and fill my hands with when I need you.  Be here to feed me and listen to me and help me solve my problems.  Make it possible for me to feel content."The tenderness in "Making it Last" is that Amber really does love Tony and her kids - but she needs to find a way out of the lonely soul-draining routine that her life has become.  Tinged with melancholy, there's a sweetness and hope that underpin every word of this brilliant novella.  We need more stories like this that affirm love over romance, that assure us that real people can make the hard decisions to deeply care for one another and find strength and happiness in those decisions.