I’ve always enjoyed Cara Bastone’s books (except one that I dnf’d), but last year’s Promise Me Sunshine was a tour de force of an emotional, slow burn romance. No Matter What, also explores grief through a marriage in trouble romance and will also rip your heart out and put it back together. I loved it.
The opening few pages are a masterpiece. Roz invites the reader into the story when she finds a lease for a new apartment pinned to the kitchen counter by a large can of tomatoes. She does what she does and makes a tomato sauce.
Every crank of the opener feels like cracking open the door to a room I’m not permitted to enter. The can pops open and I feel I’ve done something almost naughty. I’m supposed to be crying over these tomatoes, right?
Surely not simmering them.
When the sauce is done, her husband, Vin, walks into the apartment, sees that she’s put the lease on the fridge, and walks back out. Bastone has dropped us right into the crisis, established that Roz doesn’t see a way to fix her marriage, and that Vin communicates more through action than words. No Matter What is largely narrated by Roz, but there are interstitials from Vin telling stories.
The New York City in this book is an almost fairytale setting. Roz wanders into a life drawing class and finds a community that helps her heal her own soul. There’s a magical older man who frames art and bullies Roz and Vin into drinking rosè with him on a cafe patio. Central Park plays a role in healing their marriage. Housing is affordable.
I won’t go much into the plot. The reasons for Roz and Vin’s estrangement is about a terrible accident they are recovering from and not a damaging action that either took. There are miscommunications and if that’s a plot device you hate, this isn’t the book for you. But their marriage is in shambles because the way they had communicated in the past doesn’t work anymore. Roz finds that drawing gives her a way to connect with herself. Vin does one of my favorite things a man can do in a romance, he goes to therapy.
Whether Vin and Roz love each other is never the question. The question is whether they can rebuild their relationship after a traumatic experience. The romance isn’t in the falling in love, it’s in the effort they make to reconnect. It’s a slow burn because Roz spends a lot of the book making sure she’s going to be okay when Vin leaves.
