Measure Of Love

By Melissa Ford

The sequel to the bestseller, Life from Scratch
Getting re-married to your ex? Piece of cake.
Praise for Life from Scratch
" . . . characters I can relate to, who make me laugh out loud and hungry for dinner." -- MARY ALICE, co-star of Food Network's Ace of Cakes
Rachel has made a new life from scratch with her ex-husband, but can they survive the wedding plans?
It may be her second time getting married, but Rachel Goldman is definitely navigating a sticky relationship with her former--and soon-to-be-again--mother-in-law. Plus she's in a tug of war with the editor of her upcoming book on divorce who is begging her to keep her happy new relationship with her ex, Adam, on the down low. How can Rachel do that when her society-obsessed mother-in-law is eager to get a featured story in the wedding section of the New York Times? Throw in a sister-in-law-to-be who's navigating her own upcoming nuptials as well as a friend who not only doesn't want to get married, but is possibly having an affair. Rachel finds herself with too many pots simmering on a very familiar stove.

Melissa Ford is the author of Life from Scratch, the bestselling prequel to Measure of Love. She writes daily at the award-winning blog, Stirrup Queens, and lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband and twins. Look for her next novel, Apart at the Seams, coming in 2014. Visit her at www.melissafordauthor.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BelleBooks
• Release date: Mar 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781611943030

Melissa Ford

Melissa Ford is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including Writing Interactive Fiction with Twine (Pearson, Spring 2016). She is the Blogging and Social Media editor at BlogHer, a contributor at GeekDad, and the interactive fiction mentor at her local computer club.

Book preview

Piece

Praise for Life from Scratch

The prequel to Measure of Love

... characters I can relate to, who make me laugh out loud and hungry for dinner.

—Mary Alice, co-star of Food Network’s Ace of Cakes

"All journeys worthy of anything begin with wine and end with a meal. Life from Scratch does just that, adding heart and laughter to the recipe."

—Stephanie Klein, author of Straight Up and Dirty and Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp

A thoughtful, sensitive examination of the choices that give shape to our lives.

—Sarah Pekkanen, author of The Opposite of Me

Measure of Love

by

Melissa Ford

Bell Bridge Books

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Bell Bridge Books

PO BOX 300921

Memphis, TN 38130

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-303-0

Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-282-8

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 by Melissa Ford

Life from Scratch (excerpt) © 2010 by Melissa Ford

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

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Cover design: Debra Dixon

Interior design: Hank Smith

Photo credits:

Cover photo (manipulated) © Kati Molin | Dreamstime.com

:Alm:02:

Dedication

For Josh

I would marry you over and over and over again (though let’s just stay married forever in the first place)

Chapter One

I ROLL OVER in bed and let my hand rest on one of the creases in the sheet, a tiny mountain that my fingers curl over like the legs of a giant. I am alone, so it doesn’t matter if I gather all the blankets over my body or grab the second pillow on the other side of the bed. This is one of those benefits of being single, Rachel, my body purrs silently.

Wait. Except that I’m not.

My brain slowly swims closer to consciousness, taking in the fact that light is streaming in through the uncurtained windows. I am wearing a T-shirt—several sizes too big—that advertises some pizza place in the Hamptons as well as a pair of cotton briefs that I picked up three-to-the-pack at a warehouse savings store that looked semi-sexy in the packaging but not so much in actuality on my body. The other side of the bed has a small dip in the mattress, the memory of the body that occupied the space minutes ago. And there is water running from the bathroom shower head, a light sound like paper tearing.

I open my eyes and look around the room, still half-expecting to see my familiar loft apartment, but instead find myself staring at a door. With a knob. And luxurious-by-New-York-standards plaster walls as opposed to the screen I used to wrap around my bed to create the illusion of a room. The closet door is half open, exposing the bins that line the wall holding the yoga pants I prefer to wear while I cook or write. On the floor, kicked casually into the corner of the room, is a pair of men’s jeans and size 11 lace-up black oxfords. Remnants of the pre-sex shedding of clothes.

The water in the bathroom turns off, and the sound is replaced by some off-key whistling. The sort of mindless whistling one does when they’re excited for the day, when they’re actually happy that they have a functioning alarm clock. It’s a whistle I’m currently familiar with because I’ve done it myself as recently as yesterday morning, making my way through a few bars of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go while I made toast. I didn’t mean to do it; I just suddenly realized that the sound that resembled something off a Wham! album performed by birds was coming out of my pursed lips. Which is a long way to admit that, at this moment, my life is okay. Actually, it’s better than okay. It’s pretty damn good.

Recently, my agent, Erika Ledbetter from Rooks, LTD (Rooks knows Books!) sold my non-fiction proposal for a small advance to a mid-size publisher. The money isn’t enough to live on—the dresses at the Oscars cost more than the whole of my advance—but that is somewhat meaningless. It’s what the check represents: that someone cares enough to invest in me. After a post-divorce year of having to emotionally invest in myself out of necessity due to a lack of partner (not counting the hot Spaniard I dated for a few months), it feels good for someone to step forward and find me desirable. I finished the manuscript for my self-help divorce book, The Divorced Girl’s Guide to Starting Your Life from Scratch, and now I’m in that anticipatory period between completion and the book reaching the reader’s hands. Which means that along with the bliss, I’m spending a lot of time chewing Tums.

Ads on my blog, some freelance articles, and dropping the need to pay rent after moving in here have meant that for the time being, I’m still a non-graphic artist. I’m not quite ready to call myself a writer, but at least I haven’t yet returned to the New York Public Library to design brochures for another ten years. I still cook in the morning and write in the afternoon, or vice versa. And this fact alone contributes enormously to that morning whistling feeling. It’s easy to be excited about my day when I no longer have to go to my mind-numbing job.

Though the biggest reason for the morning whistling sessions is that I’m in love.

Not the sort of love where you’re half-throwing up as you get ready for the date, wondering what every single word spoken means. Not the sort of love where you mark down on your calendar how often you have sex so you can reflect on it and try to deduce how the guy feels about you from the frequency of bed sex vs. sofa sex. No, it’s the calm sort of love that comes at the end of a long road, the sort where you half-smile when he slips his hand into yours in the movie theater, and you think about how lucky you two are that you’ve found each other in this world with seven billion people and millions of missteps knocking your paths out of orbit. The fact that any two people can find each other and fall in love is a bit of a miracle.

And to find the same person and fall in love a second time defies even those enormous odds which are usually used to discuss your chance of being hit by lightning.

Adam Goldman, my ex-husband and once-again boyfriend, comes out of the bathroom, rubbing his brown hair into spikes with one towel while another is wrapped casually around his waist. He leans against the dresser and smiles at me.

That’s my shirt again, he tells me.

Is it? I yawn, plucking it away from my body so I can examine the pizza graphic with little red circles for pepperoni. It was dark last night when I grabbed it out of the drawer. In my defense, I bought you this T-shirt maybe ten years ago when we were visiting your parents at their beach house.

Ten years? Adam says dryly. How is that possible when I just started dating you this year, Ms. Goldman?

I have no idea, Mr. Goldman, I answer. You’re the teacher. Why don’t you write out one of those theorems and figure out how it’s possible.

I teach English, Adam points out, grabbing a pair of boxers and a white T-shirt out of his top drawer. I don’t do math. And right now, I teach summer school.

Not being a lawyer suits Adam even more than not being a graphic designer suits me. Being rid of that life has reverted him back to how he was during my graduate school days when I first met him, back when all he wanted to do was hurry through all of his law school reading so he could have a half hour with Nathaniel Hawthorne. He spends an extraordinary amount of hours preparing his lesson plans, teaching ninth grade English, and then grading papers into the late hours of the night. But it’s a different sort of time and a different sort of stress. He no longer storms into our apartment, releasing the eleven hours of tension that comes from doing something you despise for half your day. Instead, he likes me to sit on the sofa next to him while he corrects commas with his red pen, my legs casually dangling across his lap while I type a blog post on my computer.

See, it’s a whistling sort of life.

I watch him get ready, thinking about how we would have never reached this moment if we hadn’t divorced. Divorce, for us, was like an earthquake; a devastating event that destroyed everything on the fault line. But in the time afterward, what is rebuilt feels stronger and more stable than what existed prior to the loss. Please don’t get me wrong; I would have rather never experienced the denouement of our first relationship nor the year apart. But since I can’t change the past and can only move forward, looking for the silver linings to process that time period, I instead marvel at the ease in which we communicate, the way he makes time for me, and the way I feel safe and self-sufficient within our relationship.

We both, it turns out, needed to find ourselves again.

A few weeks into dating again, after those initial evenings where he admired my roasted chicken, and I complimented him on the sociology project he created for his students trying to refute or prove Pangloss’s theory in Candide, after we got past the careful skirting around of discussing the photographs I left in the apartment or the hours he kept at work, Adam took out a spiral notebook and shyly asked if we could define some things.

A friend of mine at work got married this year, and they sort of had this... contract thing they talked about at their wedding, Adam told me, avoiding looking at me directly.

"Like a ketubah?" I asked, pointing to a random wall as if I expected to see our Jewish marriage contract still framed and on display as decorative art.

No, it was different. They wrote it before they got married. It was all the promises they made to each other about their relationship. Just to make sure they were on the same page with everything.

You want to write something like that? I asked, my heart pounding so loudly that it made my head feel as if it were stuck inside a drum at a rock concert.

Adam shrugged and started doodling a little three-dimensional box in the corner of the page. I sat down on the sofa and listed my first request for our relationship: more spontaneous trips. Without saying anything, Adam jotted it down on the first line of the page and then added another sentence immediately after it. Take a class together every once in a while.

It was the fact that he was suggesting this exercise and not me; that he was the one concerned about the state of our relationship that clued me in to how much he had changed over the year.

From my place on the bed, I can see the edge of the contract we wrote up peeking out from behind the mirror frame. After we wrote it, we signed it, and Adam ripped it out of the notebook. It seemed official since we had just said in not so many words that we were truly going to try again. We both agreed that we didn’t want to frame it, didn’t want others to see it, and I was expressly forbidden from blogging about it.

In the end, Adam pulled the mirror back in our bedroom and sloppily taped it to the back side. We know it’s there, and while a little bit of the jagged spiral-ripped edge of the paper is visible, no one else seems to notice it when they pass through our bedroom. Every time I look in the mirror, I am mindful of all the promises we made to each other that night, all reflected back at me in addition to my image.

Adam returns to the bedroom in socked feet, still hunting for his shoes and finding them in the corner of the room. He sits down on the floor to tie them while I consider my sleep-tangled hair in the mirror and wonder if I should cover up my grey. At first I think Adam is looking at my reflection, but I follow his gaze to the sliver of exposed paper. He raises his eyebrows at me but doesn’t say a word.

He pops up, grabbing his overstuffed backpack and impishly plopping a Yankees cap over his clean hair, something I never understood. Baseball caps, in my world, are for bad hair days. Adam never has a bad hair day. He’s charmed in the looks department, always appearing neat even when his hair is tousled, perpetually slim regardless of what he eats, an easy smile that covers up his uneven lower teeth. (The family rumor is that he threw such a fit when the dentist tried to fit him for braces that his parents gave up and left his teeth misaligned.)

He bends down to kiss me, and I keep my lips firmly locked, mindful of the fact that I haven’t brushed my teeth yet and he has.

Cooking class tonight at six? he asks. As part of our contract, I’ve signed us both up for a couple’s cooking class at a boutique cooking school in our neighborhood. For the last five weeks, we’ve made dinner together with four other couples under the guidance of our teacher, a former chef turned cooking school owner. Each couple prepares their food at their station, and then we all sit down for a group meal to discuss the lesson. So far, Adam has cheerfully burned a steak, butchered a meatloaf, and scrambled dozens of eggs—all in the name of love. I know he’d much rather be watching baseball on television or reading a book, but since becoming a teacher, Adam has become a lot more easy-going and agreeable. Plus, it means that dinner is taken care of at least once a week, and I can get a blog post out of it to boot.

I’ll be ready at 5:30, and we can walk over, I agree.

Adam pauses in the doorway and turns around to look at me, still in bed. He leans his head in the doorjamb, knocking his baseball cap askew. I’ll see you tonight. I love you, Rachel.

I love you too, I say back, wondering the source of the tenderness as he walks back across the room to give me a second kiss. His hand finds my face, and he strokes my cheek gently, as if he can’t see my messy hair and sleep-crusted eyes.

Chapter Two

———

How did this happen?

After swearing off the existence of romantic love, absolutely certain that it’s just a plot device developed by rom-com writers, as similarly fantastical as vampires, werewolves, and zombies (scratch that, zombies are totally real), how did I end up in a committed relationship again... with my ex-husband?

Yes, I’m back together with Adam.

I actually know exactly how this happened, and it all goes back to a day early on after we got together when he showed up at 7 p.m. I wasn’t ready to go out since a 7 p.m. in Adam’s world is a little before 9 p.m. in mine. My experience with Adam up until that point was that he was always late, always giving his time to something other than me. So I was still in yoga pants. With my hair in a ponytail. And no make-up. And chocolate pudding in the corners of my mouth. I thought I had about two more hours to make myself presentable before he’d show.

But the buzzer went off in my apartment, and a few moments later, he was outside my door holding a roll of white butcher paper that he had attached to a wire hanger. I made this, he told me, holding out his creation. You told me that the white screen you use to photograph dishes for your blog got tomato sauce on it, so I borrowed some paper from the art room at the school and attached it to this wire hanger to make you a new screen. For your blog.

For your blog.

Can you imagine anything more romantic than having someone notice what brings you happiness and then, instead of just supporting you in enjoying it by watching from the sidelines, jumps into that happiness by making you a white screen?

I don’t know which part stunned me more: that he knew that a white screen would mean ten times more to me than a bouquet of flowers or the fact that he was there on time, exactly when he said he would be. All I know is that these two tiny gestures made me fall back in love with him.

I fell in love with him again as I washed my hair in the shower, realizing that for the first time in years, Adam was waiting for me instead of the other way around. I fell in love with him again when I shyly came out of the bathroom to slip into my bedroom area and saw that he was distracted by taking photos with his cell phone of my salt and pepper shakers against the white screen.

And then I fell in love with him again when he took my hand as we walked down the street, neither of us knowing exactly where we’re going (I mean, yes, in that moment we were headed toward the restaurant, but I mean in the larger sense of the direction of this relationship), but somehow both of us knowing without saying it aloud that we’ll be heading wherever that is together.

I CLICK OPEN the post I wrote several months ago after a particularly good date and re-read it before closing it again, leaving it still unpublished in the drafts folder on my blog. I didn’t publish it at the time because I was worried that Adam would read it and get scared off. How mortifying if I had to endure Adam’s face after reading about our undying love for one another if he furrowed his brow and said, "uh, Rach, I only read the post because I was actually on your blog to leave you a comment about how I didn’t think this was working."

Now, several months later, things are clearly working. So much so that I’ve moved back in and stacked up my yoga pants in the closet. But now the post feels out-of-date, a little too early-on dreamy to convey exactly how settled and calm I feel now that Adam and I have gotten the chance to get to know one another again, especially learning all the changes we both went through during our time apart.

I obviously need to write a new version of the post, but I pause for the hundredth time in front of a blank screen, watching the cursor blink at me like a rhythmic eye. It feels as if it’s staring at me, incredulous that I still haven’t written yet about Adam. I’ve often called my blog my computer therapist, but that description hits a little too close to home today as my blog stares coolly back at me, silently asking me to delve into the recesses of my mind to figure out why I haven’t told anyone yet about Adam if I am so deeply in love.

I don’t have the energy for a virtual psychotherapy session today. I close my blogging software and head out of the apartment to Arianna’s for a good dose of procrastination.

JULY IN THE city is soupy: a hot, sticky, bubbly mess of taxi cabs, slow-walking tourists pushing enormous strollers, cranky kids, and sun-melted gum. I sidestep someone’s discarded wad of Trident, inadvertently crushing a still-smoldering cigarette with the tip of the sandals Arianna picked up for me from a photo shoot, and dash through the intersection. Adam always strolls casually across the street. If he has the pedestrian crossing sign, he’s going to exercise his right to walk by squeezing every second he can from the anxious cab trying to make a right turn without hitting him. I, on the other hand, dart across the street like an apology. Summer in the city brings out my inner nervousness that I smother under scarves and heavy coats in the winter time.

I slow down once I’m back on the sidewalk and push my way into the upscale deli next door to Arianna’s building, waiting impatiently for a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese and an iced coffee. Mopey Maria, the owner’s daughter and the slowest coffee pourer in the world, is behind the counter. She’s the type who usually forgets to attach the lid properly, splashing half the contents of the cup across the counter as she sets it down. Because the deli is right next to Arianna’s building, I come here often enough that she should recognize me too, but if she does, she doesn’t do anything to indicate it, choosing instead to stare at the cookie display as if madeleines are the most fascinating confection in the world.

Actually, Maria, I say, carefully enunciating her name as if this will jog her memory that I’m Rachel Goldman who prefers her to move a little faster, why don’t you throw in a sprinkle cookie for Beckett.

For who? she asks slowly, taking a square of tissue paper out of the box in the cookie case. Her hand passes over the perfectly round cookie in the back to grab a half-broken one from the middle of the tray.

My friend Arianna’s son. Beckett. I come down here with him all the time.

Oh, yeah, she finally says, my face clicking into place in her slow-moving mind. Hey, Rachel. She hands me the paper bag. And that’s when I first notice that Maria is sporting a tiny diamond ring on her left hand. She follows my gaze to her hand and notes the ring as if she’s seeing one of the various summer flies that buzz around the cash register. She takes my bagel out of the toaster and then stands around for a moment, apparently forgetting the next step in preparing a cream cheese bagel.

Did you get engaged? I ask. If my voice doesn’t jolt this woman into movement soon, my bagel will be rock hard by the time it makes its way to my mouth.

Last week, she tells me. She sighs and slowly lifts the cream cheese spreader as if she is removing King Arthur’s Excalibur.

Well, congratulations, I hurriedly add. I actually have to get upstairs if that bagel is done.

My dad hates him, Maria sighs.

I’m sorry to hear that, I say as politely as possible, staring at my cooling bagel and trying to move it over to my hand with telekinesis.

He thinks that I’m making a huge mistake.

With no one behind me in line, I can see that I’ve been chosen as the giver of Mopey Maria’s free therapy session of the day. If I’m going to have to listen to her bemoan her relationship, the least she can do is pass my coffee over the counter to make it bearable. But without a clear stream of caffeine coming my way, I cut right to the heart of the matter, pointing at the cream cheese spreader at the same time as a reminder.

"My bagel, Maria. What it comes down to is whether you think you’re making a mistake. Do you think you’ll have regrets?" I ask her.

I don’t think so, Maria answers slowly. But I’m not really sure how you know.

You just do, I tell her, tapping my hand on the counter. You can’t let other people’s opinions invade your relationship. If you’re happy, you should ignore everyone else and follow your bliss. That’s what I would do.

Maria finally returns the spreader to the tub of cream cheese and starts wrapping my sandwich. Would you marry someone if your parents hated him?

I silently think to myself that I wouldn’t date someone if I were literally getting that sort of grief; I wouldn’t let the relationship proceed to the point of marriage. But I also can’t imagine whom my parents would hate with that intensity. Maybe a gun-toting Republican. On the other hand, if Arianna had a problem with Adam, it would have stopped me in my tracks. Her opinion means the world to me, and I often think that she knows me better than I know myself. At the very least, she knows me better than my parents.

Yes, I say firmly. At the end of the day, it’s not going to be your father or anyone else living your life. It’s yours alone. Therefore, you need to do what makes you happy, Maria. What feels right to you. And ignore everyone else who isn’t on board with your plan.

But what if my dad is right?

I can see that Maria needs more therapy than I can give her before the ice in my coffee will melt. I plaster on my best sympathetic face and shrug as she hands me my bagel. I still need that iced coffee.

She pours it slightly faster than usual, taking a moment to secure the lid in place. My payment for my free advice. She gives me a tight smile that has the effect of making her look extra miserable. Even five minutes with Maria can bring down a person’s bliss.

I dart into Arianna’s lobby, past the cruddy sofa across from the front desk that has absorbed every woman’s perfume from the last 100 years, and leap into the recently-vacated elevator before the doors can close. It’s New York choreography—city ballet—to catch the elevator without wasting a hot second, and it makes up for the time wasted at the deli.

Arianna opens the door, scooping Beckett up simultaneously so he can’t toddle out into the hallway. He arches his back and screeches in protest, and Arianna rolls her eyes. This honeymoon period of working at home has come to an end, she tells me. Arianna is a finisher for a designer, affixing zippers and doing beadwork, and she usually works out of the apartment, taking freelance seamstress projects on the side.

What? I try hard to keep the astonishment out of my voice. I’m sure anyone else would have seen this coming. Having Arianna at home may mean more to me than it does to Beckett. Where will I go for my midday bitch sessions? Who will accompany me on Zabar outings?

Well, we knew this couldn’t last forever, Arianna tells me, setting Beckett back on the floor so he can return to pressing the same button on his Fisher Price farm over and over again, filling the apartment with the sound of an electronic cow mooing.

We did?

I did, Arianna says dryly. He’s getting into everything at this point. When he naps, I can get a lot done, but all other times, it’s impossible. Sorry, bud, but I’m shipping you off. Mama’s got to pay the rent.

Oh, I sigh, perhaps a bit too loudly because even Arianna looks at me strangely. "He’s going somewhere. You’re going to keep working here."

Not exactly. I found a nanny share for Beckett. Two days a week, another little boy and the nanny will be here, and I’ll be taking space at work. Three days a week, they’ll be a few blocks away at the boy’s apartment. I haven’t decided what I’ll do at that point—work here or just stay at the loft. It may just be easier to have everything at the loft. Anyway, now that Ethan has moved in here, there’s just less space. All of his crap has taken over my work space.

My brother Ethan moved in a few weeks ago, giving up his Brooklyn apartment. A fantastic side effect of my best friend dating my brother is that I can now see both of them at once.

But what about... getting stuff done here? Like the laundry? I ask.

Rachel, Arianna says firmly, we’ll have lunch.

I nod my head, trying to get accustomed to this new plan. I’m not the best person when it comes to change. I busy myself with taking out Beckett’s cookie and arranging it on one of his Sesame Street plates. He eyes it suspiciously, as if he’s gearing up for the Mother of All Tantrums if you dare eat a sprinkle cookie on his plate in front of him. But when I place it on the low coffee table and walk away, his body releases the pent-up howl, and he goes to town, peppering the floor with cookie bits.

I had to give Mopey Maria therapy in order to get my bagel, I tell Arianna. She nods in agreement.

About the engagement? Her father hates the guy? We had the same conversation yesterday when I had to run in there with Ethan to pick up dinner.

What did you tell her? I question, taking a bite of my now somewhat cold and definitely hard poppy seed bagel.

I told her that maybe her father could see something that she couldn’t see. That he obviously had her best interests at heart, and she should reconsider marrying the guy if she’s getting this sort of feedback, Arianna says, picking up a stray pair of Beckett’s socks.

I stare at her for a moment. That’s terrible advice. She’s supposed to live her life based on everyone else’s whims?

Not everyone else, Arianna says carefully. We’re talking about her father; someone who knows her well. Someone who has a broader perspective that comes with age.

So if your parents hated Ethan, you would have dropped him?

Yes, Arianna says honestly, which is precisely why I love her, though my loyalty to my brother makes me cranky with her answer. If they made a strong argument for why we shouldn’t be together, it would have been stupid to ignore them. What? I should only take advice if it confirms what I already want to do?

Of course not! I realize this is all hypothetical since Arianna’s parents—as far as I know—approve of their relationship. I only see her parents when they come to the city for a visit. They’re wholesome, Midwestern types, the sort who support their daughter through any facet of life but would love for her to settle into a traditional marriage that reflects their traditional marriage. As if she mirrored her life to resemble theirs, it would confirm their life choices. I could see them approving of any relationship that looked as if it had the legs to walk itself down the aisle.

Plus, it’s hard to not like Ethan. Being in a relationship with Arianna has aged him, in a good way. He has finally taken a normal job as the photography teacher at a ritzy private school on the Upper East Side, which means he no longer mooches off of our sister, Sarah, or me. He’s even teaching adult education classes

Reviews for Measure Of Love

[bookdivasreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rachel Goldman should be on top of the world. Her blog is an internet success. She has a book about to published. And she's in love. Of course, there are a few snags; her book is about being successful at divorce and she's about to remarry her ex-husband. If that isn't bad enough, she thinks her best friend, Arianna, is cheating on her live-in boyfriend, Ethan, who just happens to be Rachel's brother. Almost forgot, her ex-mother in law, Anita, wants to make Rachel and Adams second wedding even more of a society event than their first.Rachel carefully navigated the world of marriage breakup, divorce, and being single in Life From Scratch. Although she was devastated by the breakup and divorce, she found solace in writing about her problems and endeavored to achieve success at cooking. She merged these two into a blog that become a massive hit and evolved into a book contract. Rachel wasn't looking for love, but she found it - with her ex-husband, Adam. He has left his law firm and embraced his first love, literature by becoming a teacher. In Measure of Love, Adam and Rachel take their relationship to the next step, marriage (or in this case remarriage). Rachel is happy that Adam wants to commit to her, but before she knows it she's trying to plan a wedding in less than four months. What follows is a mixture of I Love Lucy and Jane Austen's Emma (the latter is actually referred to in the book); well-intentioned meddling with disastrous results (minus the comedic happy endings).I found Measure of Love to be a fast-paced read. I almost felt as if I was meeting up with old friends as I revisited with Rachel, Arianna, and others in their new struggles and dealings. Rachel isn't as self-assured in Measure of Love, but only when it comes to her love life. Arianna is still somewhat exotic, but not nearly as extreme when compared to Adam's sister Lisbeth. Lisbeth is an artist and is planning her own wedding to her partner, Emily, a physician. (Truly an odd couple with disparate personalities, but they fit.) I felt sucked in by Rachel's internal struggle with her remarriage and her well-intended meddling. I waited patiently with Adam as he watched Rachel struggle with these issues. I suffered along with Arianna as she drifted slowly away from her best-friend. And I hoped for that happy-ending for not just Rachel and Adam but also for Lisbeth and Emily. The characters are well-developed and the situations not only realistic but relatable. Ms. Ford blends great writing and a tale about romance and love, mixed with relationship/friendship drama and touches of humor; the result is a great read about second chances for love. Measure of Love is the second installment in Ms. Ford's Life from Scratch series; I am rather anxious to read the next installment, featuring Arianna's story, Apart At the Seams.

[marybeth28 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the first book in this series "Life From Scratch." It was a nice, light, entertaining read. However, in the second book, the main character becomes impossibly whiny and neurotic. It was difficult to find empathy for her, while she becomes upset over a series of problems that are all her fault, and are largely in her head. The author also seemed to use different characters as a way to explore the pros and cons of marriage, and characters in the book tended to make long, drawn out speeches on the subject. I found myself skimming through several pages of speeches. By the end of the book, I just wanted the story to be over and didn't care what happened to the main character at all. Great first book, but I can't say that I enjoyed the follow-up all that much.