Review: Poignant, Heart-Wrenching, Fabulous
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 31, 2013
"She was wrong about love, though.  Love wasn`t mean.  It was life that was mean.  Love was where you found the strength to deal with it."Stop!!  If you haven`t read the three previous books in the Camelot series by Ruthie Knox, don`t start with "Making it Last".  (How to Misbehave, Along Came Trouble, Flirting with Disaster are much better read in order.)Ruthie Knox shows her brilliance and bravery by writing a novella that makes the reader weep, ponder life, and celebrate the true meaning of marriage.  Fourteen years after Amber and Tony meet, they are both struggling.  Tony has always been afraid that he would drop the ball and lose everything that matters to him.  As the housing economy takes a downturn, Tony puts in eighty hour weeks to keep his family afloat.  Amber is a stay-at-home mom, whose youngest son has just started school.  Adrift in the dream house that Tony has built her, she doesn`t even know who she is anymore.This book is not for readers who only want the fun part of romance.  This is the real world where where a son tells his mom he hates her, where money is tight, and where a three day trip to Jamaica has the mom weeping under a tree.Amber:  "She had to admit, she`d kind of gone off cocks the last few years.  Sharing a house with four of them would do that to a girl."There is still sass and steam in this book, but it is less obvious.  Readers get a happy ending, but a realistic one.  Tony pulled at my heart-strings in "How to Misbehave".  At times, I wanted to kick Amber for letting ten years go by without taking a stand, but she is definitely a believable character.  In a fabulous move, Ruthie finally shows us the more tender side of Amber`s mom Janet.The Author`s Note at the end of this book should be mandatory reading for anyone contemplating getting married.