No Matter What by Cara Bastone
Publication date: 3rd March 2026
Pages: 352
Genre: Romance
Format read: Audiobook
Rating: ★★★★★
The blurb: Sometimes love sends you back to the drawing board.
After a traumatic accident threatens the foundations of their happy marriage, a couple tries to rebuild and find their way back to each other—and themselves—in this tender, slow-burn romance.
Roz and Vin can’t look each other in the eyes anymore, let alone share a bed. It’s been a year since they survived a life-altering accident, and their marriage hasn’t been the same. But Roz has held out hope that they can fix things, until she discovers Vin has signed a new lease. So she does what any soon-to-be-divorced Manhattanite would do: sign up for a figure-drawing class.
Between Roz’s determined attempts to improve her artistic skills and her adventures with her best friend, Raffi, she can almost ignore Vin’s impending move-out date and his footsteps in their previously unoccupied guest room. But it would all be a lot easier if Vin wasn’t Raffi’s older brother, and if she didn’t still find him incredibly, debilitatingly attractive and kind.
So kind, in fact, that Vin offers to let Roz draw him. What is she supposed to say? It’s probably better than her original plan of finding some random male model online, and she needs all the practice she can get. Plus, that’s sure to make a separation easier, right? Focus on every detail of your estranged spouse’s body while drawing him in the nude? But after the year they’ve spent avoiding each other, it feels good to see and be seen by one another again.
As Roz works to capture the wholeness of the person she fell in love with, will they both be able to draw upon the feelings they buried deep inside to finally heal together?
My thoughts: Honestly, I’m not sure how I made it to the end of this book without crying. The trauma, the fear, the rebuilding…the ‘no matter what’ of it all. I was infatuated by Roz and Vin’s deep and abiding love, the tender ways they took care of each other and gave each other space. I felt a bit emotional, watching as they both attempted to heal themselves so that they could come back together again. (That’s not a spoiler, right? It is, after all, a romance novel complete with the expected HEA). Vin and Roz felt like real people who had gone through something traumatic and were slowly picking up the pieces.
Not your average second chance romance, No Matter What felt believable, the relationship was that much deeper with Roz and Vin having been married for 8 years. They moved around each other like a married couple who know and love each other – the same way I hope my husband knows me after 8 years of being married. Vin knows her bedtime routine and the way she moves around the kitchen – real stuff that living together brings.
There was an element of miscommunication which I normally try to avoid (a difficult thing to do as a romance reader). In this book however, it was so delicately woven into the whole story that it felt right. It actually explained so much, making the resolution so much more rewarding. (Again, how was I not crying?)
The 7th book written by Cara Bastone that I have read in the last 18 months, No Matter What has been my favourite, only marginally beating Ready or Not to the top spot – both are books I wish I could read for the first time all over again.