Completely (New York #3)
Ruthie Knox
Loveswept
2017, 252p
Copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}:
Beneath her whole “classic English beauty” appearance is an indomitable spirit that has turned Rosemary Chamberlain into something of a celebrity mountain climber. But after an Everest excursion takes a deadly turn, Rosemary is rescued by her quick-thinking guide, New York native Kal Beckett. Rosemary’s brush with death brings out a primal need to celebrate life—and inspires a night of steamy sex with the rather gorgeous man who saved her.
The son of a famous female climber with a scandalous past, Kal Beckett is still trying to find himself. In the Zen state of mind where Kal spends most of his time, anything can happen—like making love to a fascinating stranger and setting off across the world with her the next morning. But as their lives collide in the whirlwind of passion that is New York City, the real adventure is clearly just beginning. . . .
This is the third and final book in the New York series, connected by the middle story to a previous book from Ruthie Knox. In this book, Rosemary is the ex-wife of Winston, from book 2. After their divorce she decided that she was going to do things for herself after a long time of simply being a wife and mother or as she describes it, “wallpaper”. She joins a group of women for something called the Seven Summits – climbing the highest peaks on the seven continents beginning for some reason, with the highest mountain in the world, Everest.
So the book opens with Rosemary at Camp Three high up Everest but a tragic avalanche further down the mountain below her means that her trek is cut short and she’s air lifted off the mountain and back down to Lukla. With her is Kal Beckett an ‘ice doctor’ known as Doctor Doom by the climbers and Sherpas. Kal is half Sherpa himself and his mother is a well known climber with a shadow in her past. Kal keeps an eye on Rosemary, spying that she’s about to come unhinged and the two of them spend a night together losing themselves in life.
I have to admit I expected the Everest climb to be a larger portion of the book and I was looking forward to that. Instead Rosemary heads to New York very early in the story, deciding she needs to see her daughter after that scare on the mountain. Kal is conveniently from New York and after he is robbed, the two of them fly to New York together after the night they share. Perhaps their shared experience makes everything so much more intense but it still feels very quick – this book takes place over the space of less than a week and because of that, even though they do spend quite a bit of time together, I still never really got the feeling that I got to know a lot about Kal. I felt I knew more about Rosemary from the previous books and because we’re in her head but even still some of her motivations feel a bit rushed and like they weren’t really thought through. I was really hoping that most of the book would take place during Rosemary’s climb however and that perhaps the fallout would be in New York. Instead we are treated to Rosemary running around after her daughter, who I remember as pretty bratty from Winston’s book but she really steps it up here. I get that she’s a teenage girl with some abandonment issues but she’s incredibly privileged and has chosen to distance herself from her mother (and possibly her father) as punishment. It was hard to really like Beatrice at all and I really hope she doesn’t end up getting her own book because I can’t imagine being in her head.
Winston and Allie make a couple of appearances in this book and then Allie seems to randomly adopt Rosemary and as Beatrice is working on a film with Allie’s mother the two worlds seem to collide but it doesn’t really feel very smooth. It feels a bit forced, especially in moments like when Allie’s father and Kal start having a random deep and meaningful conversation. It’s a quirky family and when they’re all together in one scene, it begins to feel a little too much. And it takes the focus off of Kal and Rosemary. They declare love quite easily but then the book kind of limps on for another 50+ pages where there seems to be conflict inserted for no real reason other than maybe the book seemed a bit short and the author should stretch it out a bit. A lot of made of the fact that Kal and Rosemary are so very different and how could they ever work which is interesting because they’ve been a “thing” for about five minutes but the sex is fabulous, they seem to enjoy talking to each other and how will they know if they never actually try it? Kal seemed like he needed a lot more work as a character as well – his mother is a Sherpa and his father white, so that part was really interesting and that combination is not one I’ve ever come across in fiction before and I enjoyed learning about the history and the role of the Sherpas in climbing Everest and how they view tourism, etc. But at the same time it seemed like Kal had gaping holes in his character and he seemed almost bland and deadpan. I never got much from him, not about the avalanche, his past, his fears for the future, just a blank expression and a tightening up.
This one just didn’t live up to my expectations unfortunately.
5/10
Book #161 of 2017
All The Books I Can Read 
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