Review: The Fall (The Reluctant Romantics, #1) by Kate Stewart

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Review

“We got it right the first time. We just fucked up a little along the way. We weren’t perfect— never have been— but we were beautiful. We still are.”

3.5 stars

This is an intense second-chance romance, and a rollercoaster read. Honestly, I struggled with this book at the beginning and it took me a while to get into it. I had some heroine issues, and wasn’t feeling it as much as I wanted to, but it sucked me in, and dayum!

It’s the story of Dean and Dallas. Best friends in high school, they both had feelings for each other, but Dean is three years older than Dallas and he wasn’t prepared to cross any lines with her. When they meet up again in college, however, everything is different – the feelings are still very much there and now Dallas is all grown up and isn’t prepared to let Dean push her away anymore and it’s all on!

“You aren’t a girl to just screw, Dallas. You are a girl to fall in love with. I have always thought that about you, but I couldn’t be with you the way I wanted to.”
“Oh please, that was just an excuse for you to be able to sleep around. Newsflash, I’m no longer innocent and haven’t been for some time. I don’t need you to marry me. I need you to take me upstairs.”

“You can’t handle what I have to give to you,” I growled as I studied her.
“Try me,” she said coyly as she gripped me firmly through my pants.

Phew, you go girl!!!

The main part of the story is actually set ten years after their blissful year-long college relationship fell apart. Dean and Dallas are both successful doctors, she is still in their home town in Texas, he is in New York. He assumes she’s moved on and married, and when he learns that she hasn’t he decides to move back home to get back the girl he’s never gotten over.

“I’ll still love you … I’ll still love you in a week, in a month, and in three years. I’ll still love you for the rest of my life. You did that to me, and you can’t change it. No matter where you go or what you do, I will still love you.”

This is a really intense relationship. We don’t know what happened to tear them apart, we just know that they shared an incredible love, their parting was devastating for them both and Dean never got over it. Meanwhile, Dallas has been living her life and working hard to realize her dreams of becoming a doctor and opening her own practice with her younger sister. She’s in a relationship with a great guy, and life is going well until Dean unexpectedly shows up and tilts her world on its axis.

From their first encounter in the present, the friendship and genuine affection for each other is evident. Dallas’ initial reaction to seeing Dean is joy and they instantly fall back into their easy camaraderie. But very quickly we see that there is SO much more there and despite the fact that he knows she’s involved with somebody else, Dean makes no secret of the fact that he wants her back.

“You have the other half of my heart and I can’t live without it.” He gripped my shoulders, his forehead to mine. “You are the other half of me. Tell me how to fight for you, baby. Tell me what to do. I’ll do whatever you want. Don’t take my life away from me. Forgive me.”

Oh my God, the angst in this book is painful! I don’t mind a bit of angst, and these two have it in overload! The fact that Dallas is in a relationship is only part of the issue, and honestly, I could have done without that storyline because I really don’t like the way it was handled Dallas should have cut poor Josh loose WAY earlier than she did. She knew she didn’t love him, and regardless of Dean being back in town, she wasn’t being fair to him. But with Dean back in her life, it ended up being way messier than it needed to be and there is enough going on with these two without throwing in a love triangle! There is SO much to Dean and Dallas’ story and as the past slowly unfolds through flashbacks and devastating revelations, my heart broke for both of them.

“I can’t imagine a worse kind of hell than seeing you in front of me again and not being able to touch you.”

“You thought what we had was beautiful. I did, too, except while you were gone, I made it ugly.”

The beauty of this story is in Dean’s incredible and unwavering love for Dallas, and her slow but eventual acceptance of everything that happened between them, and their fight to move forward together. And once they actually started to sort through their crap, that’s when I really became involved in the story.

“I want all of you, Dallas. Every single piece. Even the ones I broke.”

Dallas is a really strong heroine, and though I had some issues with how she handled everything…

Spoiler
She held out way too long in my opinion. Yes, she was scared of being hurt, but come on! This is the love of her life!!! I could understand her pushing him away in the beginning, but her constant running got annoying the longer it went on.

…But once they dealt with their issues, I started to really like her. And Dean’s determination to make up for his mistakes and win his girl back was absolutely amazing. I swear to God, almost everything out of the man’s mouth, every gesture, and every heartfelt look was either incredibly romantic or devastatingly sexy, and OMG the swoon is off the charts! He accepted his mistakes and wanted nothing more than to make up for the past and finally claim his HEA with the woman he has loved his whole life.

“I loved you then. I love you now. I’ll love you tomorrow. And if you walk away from me, not one damn woman in the world will ever take your place. No one ever has. I had to learn, Dallas. It took some time. Please, just let go, forgive me, and let me love you.”

The romance is an absolute swoonfest, and incredibly passionate with lots of sexy time that is both emotional and ridiculously hot. But there is a lot more to this book than just the love story, with Dallas and Dean’s families and friends playing a big part, and though I predicted different elements of the story, I was still incredibly shaken by events and yes, I read with big, fat tears rolling down my face – more than once.

So this one was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I wish I had been able to feel it more, and I admit I did think about putting it down when I wasn’t finding myself connecting to the story (this wasn’t helped by Dean’s constant switch to Spanish to make secret declarations – I know that it was kind of their thing, but it breaks into the flow of a book when you have to keep running to Google translate to figure out what the hell he’s saying to her!), but I’m really glad I carried on with it because I was eventually sucked into the intensity of it all, and loved watching it all unfold as Dean and Dallas recapture all that they had lost. Angsty, intense and beautifully romantic, the story ends at a really good place, with an epilogue to finish it all off.

I didn’t love it, but still a great read – 3.5 stars.

 

The Reluctant Romantics series

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000035_00020]  The Mind  The Heart

The Fall (#1)
Review
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The Mind (#1.5)
Buy:  Kindle Ebook

The Heart (#2)
Buy:  Kindle Ebook

 

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