About Last Night by Ruthie Knox
Published June 11,
2012
“Listen, City,” she
said. “About last night. Thanks for—”
For getting me back
on the train? For taking me home with you, undressing me, letting me sleep in
your bed, washing my clothes, setting out a towel and a toothbrush for me, and
making me breakfast? Oh, and let’s not forget kissing me and touching me until
I damn near lost my mind.
“— for taking care of
me,” she finished.
Grade: A-
Official Summary from
Author’s Site:
Cath Talarico knows a
mistake when she makes it, and God knows she’s made her share. So many, in
fact, that this Chicago girl knows London is her last, best shot at starting
over. But bad habits are hard to break, and soon Cath finds herself back where
she has vowed never to go . . . in the bed of a man who is all kinds of wrong:
too rich, too classy, too uptight for a free-spirited troublemaker like her.
Nev Chamberlain feels
trapped and miserable in his family’s banking empire. But beneath his
pinstripes is an artist and bohemian struggling to break free and lose control.
Mary Catherine — even her name turns him on — with her tattoos, her secrets,
and her gamine, sex-starved body, unleashes all kinds of fantasies.
When blue blood mixes
with bad blood, can a couple that is definitely wrong for each other ever be
perfectly right? And with a little luck and a lot of love, can they make last
night last a lifetime?
I Say:
About Last Night is
not light and fluffy; it’s intense and dark, with a very damaged heroine and
the world’s hottest banker. I haven’t been reading many contemporaries lately,
but Courtney Milan’s review convinced me to give this book—and this author—a
try. I’m glad I did.
In a way, I feel like I can’t read this book the way it’s
meant to be read, and it’s because of the heroine. Cath is absolutely my polar
opposite. If I was in a romance, I’d be in a nineteenth-century historical, a
scholarly, socially inept, sheltered spinster. Cath has more experience with
men, life, and really awful stuff than I could get in three lifetimes. The only
thing I have context for is her current project on a knitting exhibit, and even
then I don’t even knit, I crochet. What she does hardly makes sense to me.
And yet, by the skill of the author, I begin to understand.
I can at least sympathize with Cath and feel for her. Ruthie Knox is exposing
me to reactions—being in a relationship and refusing to acknowledge it as one,
remaining skittish and untrusting even when someone treats you well, keeping
almost all personal information to yourself—that are utterly foreign, which
stem from a past I can barely imagine. None of these things are in my nature,
and I hope to never see or experience the kind of trauma that made Cath who she
is.
The opening scene is delightful—Cath knows her fellow
passengers so well that she successfully predicts their order of appearance at
the train station, thus winning a bet and gaining an item for her knitting
exhibit. The next scene is equally delightful, for a much different reason.
Cath ends up at someone’s house, one of the train passengers she has nicknamed
City. “Cool as a cucumber and veddy, veddy English.” (The book is set in
contemporary Britain, but Cath grew up in America.) City, whose real name is
Nev, treats her very well when she accidentally gets extremely drunk—there’s a
bonus reminder in this book that allergy medicine does not mix well with
alcohol. But when Cath wakes up and finds someone she thought was a stuffy
banker dressed in casual clothes and displaying a talent for painting…their
chemistry just…I swear, some of these pages crackle. It’s a very adult book, we’ll
just say that.
Then things get more complicated when Nev’s brother shows up
and Cath slinks out the door without even leaving a phone number. A good
portion of the book is devoted to Nev patiently wooing Cath and her allowing
him ever so slightly closer. It’s much less frustrating than it sounds, because
it’s done well. And it’s not completely angsty—Nev and Cath have cute moments,
like when Nev woos her with junk food. Or when they have sexy banter:
“If I didn’t know
better, I’d begin to think you don’t like me.”
“Who says I like you?”
But the question didn’t come out as ballsy as she wanted it to, not when he was
close enough to make her skin itch.
He chuckled. “How many
times did you come last night?” he asked in a low voice.
Three. “I’m not
answering that question.”
“You don’t have to. I
remember every one. You like me fine.”
Have I mentioned that Nev is really awesome? He’s pretty
much ideal. He has his issues, for sure—mostly with his family and his career.
But he cooks, he runs, he’s thoughtful in his treatment of Cath, he’s patient
in his courtship of her, he’s creative and playful in bed, and he gives this
speech:
“[I]t seems to me that
when I meet a woman with whom I have a phenomenal physical connection, who I
think about so much it disrupts my ability to do my job, not to mention sleep,
and who I find attractive and interesting and funny and enjoy spending time
with, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to get to know her better. Which is why I
find it a bit baffling, to be honest, that you’re so determined to keep me at
arm’s length.”
Cath is determined to deny things. In fact, she believes
that she can’t trust any of her instincts because they led her astray in the
past. Hence, the more she likes Nev, the more nervous she becomes. But their emotional
relationship progresses, ever so slowly, and they fall in love. And they’re so
wonderful together. And there are heartbreaking lines like “Their love was a
mistake, but it was real,” and “Knowing that what they had was a mistake didn’t
make it any less real or any less beautiful.” And then there is a messy fight.
In public. And it’s spectacularly awful.
Here I’ll back up and mention that Cath’s job is awesome, as
is her relationship with her boss, Judith. They’re curators working on an exhibit
about hand-knitting. One of my favorite exchanges:
Cath sighed. “I
thought curators would be above the pressure to sex everything up.”
“Nope. If you want to
be one, you’ll have to get creative.”
“Creative is my middle
name.”
“Your middle name is
Catherine,” Judith said, packing the sweaters back into the box.
This is relevant because Cath finds a way to make
hand-knitting very sexy, indeed. I’m a little uncomfortable with her solution
(mild spoiler): appearing on television and in newspapers wearing a hand-knit
bikini. Public display of her tattoos, which are on her stomach and back,
appeared in the aforementioned messy fight and comes back again for the ending.
The ending also makes me a little uncomfortable; though I
can justify it, I wish I didn’t need to justify it. (SPOILER) Nev puts on an
art show, with paintings of Cath’s tattoos and an erotic painting of Cath and
Nev prominently displayed. He wants to show her his perspective of her life and
convince her she does love him. It’s very sweet and very effective but…displayed
in public. With strangers and Nev’s parents and Cath’s boss and Cath’s boss’s
boss. Also, this dialogue:
“You could sue me for
all of them. I didn’t ask you to sign a release.”
“I would’ve said no.”
“Precisely.”
In the context of Cath’s contrariness and reluctance and
self-denial, it makes sense. But I’m uncomfortable. Someone else expresses similar sentiments, but more strongly.
Bottom Line:
This review isn’t nearly as long as it should be. I have
trouble talking about this book because I can consume it, but I can’t fully process it. I really am a sheltered spinster, despite living in the twenty-first
century, and that means it’s hard for me to process such a complex, adult
relationship. But it’s an excellently-written book, with achingly real
characters and a fascinating, original, thought-provoking take on tropes of “opposites
attract” and “physical before emotional.”
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