Title: No Matter What
Series: Hearts of New York, #3
Author: Cara Bastone
Narrator: Alex Finke
Publisher: Dial Press
Publication date: March 3, 2026
Print length: 352 pages
Audio length: 10 hours 39 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Library
Rating:
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?
Cara Bastone excels at portraying people going through difficult times and responding in ways that feel real, and No Matter What is another fine example of her compelling storytelling. What’s more, this book has a quite lovely reversal of a standard romance trope — more on that in a moment!
Quick note first, though: No Matter What appear on Goodreads and elsewhere as #3 in the Hearts of New York series — but if you didn’t see that on the description, it wouldn’t really matter. The series is actually just different stand-alone stories, all set in New York. There’s a teeny bit of cross-over between books, but in No Matter What, you could blink and miss it. My point is — while I’ve enjoyed each of these books, there’s no actual reason to go in a particular order, so if the synopsis for this book appeals to you, there’s no need to worry if you haven’t read the other books.
Onward with the story: No Matter What opens with main character Roz contemplating the end of her marriage. Married for eight years to Vin, the man she expected to spend forever with, Roz comes home one day to find a lease for a new apartment on her kitchen counter. They’ve had the year from hell: Following a devastating accident that left her, Vin, and Vin’s brother (and Roz’s best friend) Raffi with serious injuries and lasting trauma, she and Vin can barely be in the same room together any more, and he’s been sleeping in the guest room ever since Raffi finally recovered enough to move back out on his own. So it shouldn’t be a total surprise that Vin is leaving, but Roz is distraught. Fleeing her apartment, she goes to check out the building he’ll be moving into, and stumbles across a figure drawing class taking place there. Although it’s been many years since she explored her artistic side, Roz picks up pencils and begins to draw.
As the story unfolds, we start to learn more about Roz, Vin, and Raffi, and see the lingering after-effects of the accident. Roz and Vin clearly still love one another, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to move them past the horrible experiences of the past year. But as Roz continues attending the drawing classes, she finds herself looking not just at the models, but at the world around her with fresh eyes — and learning how to see helps her finally start to view Vin’s behavior and their crumbling relationship in new ways.
I could feel the tension and pain between Roz and Vin, and loved how Raffi — a total cinnamon roll character — manages to bring joy to the people he loves, even when things clearly aren’t going well. Roz’s exploration of drawing gives her a way to get out of her own head, and also helps her look at Vin in a different way — including literally, when he offers to model for her when she needs extra practice. Nothing like carefully viewing your nude husband to make you truly see him!
I mentioned early on the inversion of expected tropes. What I’m referring to is the classic 3rd act break-up, which can be maddening when it feels more like a plot device than an organic development in the course of a love story. Here, we get something that feels fresh: a 3rd act reconnection! Roz and Vin are separated by pain and trauma and emotional struggles when we meet them; he’s on the verge of moving out, she’s angry and feels abandoned. No one is happy. Their love story seems to have come to a screeching halt. But over the course of the novel, they finally begin to inch back toward one another, so that the 3rd act becomes a focus on rebuilding from the ashes left behind after the accident, and committing to finding a way to rediscover their love and learn to be together once again. It’s lovely.
On the flip side, these are two people in desperate need of therapy, both as a couple and as individuals who clearly suffer from PTSD. Their communication is absolutely awful — and perhaps it’s especially maddening via audiobook, where the stilted sentences, incomplete thoughts, and awkward pauses are all the more obvious. I had to wonder what their communication style was like before the accident. Were they just so happy then that it didn’t matter that they didn’t know how to express themselves directly? It can be painful to read/listen to their interactions in the first two-thirds or so of the book, and while it’s a huge relief when they finally start to truly talk, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by their inability to have a complete conversation for so long.
My other, quite minor quibble about this book is that the drawing scenes go on a long time. Maybe this will work for readers who are more drawn (pun intended) to artistic pursuits. For me, a little goes a long way, and the descriptions of the class and the drawing styles and lessons felt repetitive after a while.
The narration by Alex Finke is highly engaging, with a great deal of expression in both the sad and funny moments. Certain characters are especially fun to listen to, and the narrator delivers distinct voices, full of personality.
Overall, I enjoyed No Matter What, and look forward to reading more by Cara Bastone, including the next book in the Hearts of New York series, I’ve Got You, scheduled for release in March 2027.
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