REVIEW POST: Completely by Ruthie Knox: New York Trilogy Series
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RATING/REVIEW: ☕☕☕☕☕ (5 CUPS OF STEAMING HOT COCOA, readers will definitely need it for this romance that started up on Mt. Everest!)
Completely is the third book in the New York series by the ever talented Ruthie Knox and one that comes full circle for the series but also because it is an off shoot of her first book, About Last Night (a favorite of mine).
At first, we might get a little disoriented since the book begins on Mount Everest where we find our female protagonist about to proceed in climbing this famous landmark. But circumstances change when an avalanche happens. A traumatic event for Rosemary Chamberlain especially when it could have easily been her who died. Suffering from shock and a numbness that quickly settles she gladly accepts the help of one their guides, Doctor Doom aka Kal Beckett. Kal's entire life has revolved around Everest, his parents are infamous because of it, his adult goals were focused on helping the people of Nepal especially the guides. But one setback after another has extinguished the fire of his dreams. Now he finds himself in a middle of another avalanche that cements the possibility that he can't really help at all. Meeting, the Princess aka Rosemary in this most unusual circumstances, he finds himself in the middle of another dream. But this time it feels like this one isn't going anywhere especially when they get back to real life. But sparks between Rosemary and Kal are quick to burn but so hard to put out, even harder to maintain. Can they find a way to pursue their dreams without giving up each other?
Completely is so aptly titled because Kal and Rosemary's story is not just a romance in the sense that they fall in love and everything falls into place. In fact, falling in love isn't the problem. It's how to live your life as an independent person yet still be together. It's not a topic that elicits romantic feelings but it really is a valid question and this is the whole journey for Rosemary and Kal. The frustration of real life situations but it's the certainty of that love that makes it worthwhile.
For fans of the series, the connection to other characters in previous books was not obvious at first until other characters start appearing. For those just reading Completely as a standalone, don't worry, the other characters won't take over and you won't get lost. Reading the whole series, however, is highly recommended. Truly, Madly and Completely is a definite experience in real life romance.
EXCERPT:
Meet Rosemary Chamberlain
Rosemary Chamberlain hadn’t showered in fifty-two days.
She’d counted.
Climbing was a waiting game, and climbing Mount Everest forced patience on those who didn’t have it. But Rosemary had patience in spades. She spent long, indistinguishable mornings huddled in a sleeping bag on the floor of a tent, perched on a shelf between the sky and the long drop, waiting for a break in the weather. Counting.
Twenty-one days since she’d last worn fewer than two pairs of socks, and thirty-seven since she’d seen her own naked body.
Seventeen cracks in the sole of the climbing boot. Five points on the toe cleat that she kicked into the ice.
She put her weight on it, paused, waiting to see if it would hold. She counted the white clouds of her exhalation—two, three, four—and pushed hard to engage her quads. They burned, but that didn’t matter. Her left arm came up, synchronized, and drove the ice ax in.
Above her, the orange blob that was her team’s guide, Indira, beckoned with one arm. She shouted something, but the wind took her words before they could reach Rosemary’s ears. She found a good placement for her left foot, weighted it, counted her breath, straightened her leg, swung her ax.
Three team members ahead. Four behind. If she could just know how many feet remained between her and the summit, she would count them down, but she couldn’t, so she counted everything else.
She’d written six thousand words yesterday. Two thousand competent and chirpy for an article that would appear on a conservationist website in England, four thousand plodding and uninspired on the draft of the first significant piece of her book. She needed to turn it in to her publisher as soon as she’d completed this climb—it was meant to be a magazine article, with the serial rights already sold to a major American outdoor publication—but she knew what she’d written lacked the spark her editor was looking for, the inspiration that would turn Rosemary’s book into a bestseller.
This morning, she’d taken a walk around the perimeter of Base Camp with Indira, speculating about their chances at making the summit. They spotted three birds flying low against the bleak sky, which Indira had told her was a good sign.
Some climbers adopted magical thinking.
Rosemary preferred to count.
Her teammate Anna had three children, four, six, and nine years old. Her husband wanted a divorce. Her husband didn’t understand why Anna couldn’t get a job at a bank and stay home with her family, but Rosemary did.
Anna’s family was for the quiet pauses in between the swings of her ax. The mountain was her life.
Rosemary’s left leg trembled uncontrollably when she leaned into it. She paused to rest and looked out at the alien landscape of snow and ice, bald rock, clear blue sky.
She didn’t know if Everest was her life. She only knew that she’d spent most of her adulthood barely living, then left everything behind to set off down the path that led her here.
Rosemary was the driving force behind organizing a team of British women to climb the Seven Summits—the highest mountains on each of the seven continents, beginning with Everest and then onward to Denali, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro, and the rest. She’d put everything she had on the line to bring her to this moment.
Her heart beat sixty-two times per minute. She was thirty-nine years old, she had two hundred and six bones.
She had one child, a daughter, who barely spoke to her.
She had one marriage, to Winston, who’d released her when she asked him to.
She had one home, in England, but she sold it and bought a cottage where she'd never lived. Now what she had was a bank account fat with pounds sterling and a pack strapped to her back containing nine freeze-dried meals, thirteen energy bars, and five days’ fuel left for her camp stove.
This was her seventh trip through the Khumbu Icefall, her fourth journey to Camp One, where she’d spent five nights acclimatizing already with the other women in her group. If everything went well, it would be their last foray onto the mountain. They would do two nights at Camp Two, push onward to a night at Camp Three, and then a short and fitful attempt to sleep on the South Col before departing for the summit in the wee hours of the morning.
Climbers knew how to wait. They knew how to count, to plan, and to winnow themselves to nothing but gloved hands grasping lengths of rope, lungs sucking air from oxygen canisters, cold feet pushing metal spikes into rivers of ice.
Sheer will.
Rosemary exhaled, long and slow, and counted. One. Two. Three. Four.
She turned back to the ice and climbed.
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