{"id":7224,"date":"2016-01-05T21:56:20","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T02:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/?p=7224"},"modified":"2018-01-01T06:19:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T11:19:55","slug":"review-the-fall-the-reluctant-romantics-1-by-kate-stewart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/?p=7224","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Fall (The Reluctant Romantics, #1) by Kate Stewart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buy:\u00a0 Kindle Ebook<\/a>\u00a0 |\u00a0 Paperback<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Review<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\u201cWe got it right the first time. We just fucked up a little along the way. We weren’t perfect\u2014 never have been\u2014 but we were beautiful. We still are.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

3.5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019t prepared to cross any lines with her. When they meet up again in college, however, everything is different \u2013 the feelings are still very much there and now Dallas is all grown up and isn\u2019t prepared to let Dean push her away anymore and it\u2019s all on!<\/p>\n

\u201cYou aren\u2019t 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\u2019t be with you the way I wanted to.\u201d
\n\u201cOh please, that was just an excuse for you to be able to sleep around. Newsflash, I\u2019m no longer innocent and haven\u2019t been for some time. I don\u2019t need you to marry me. I need you to take me upstairs.\u201d
\n\u2026
\n\u201cYou can\u2019t handle what I have to give to you,\u201d I growled as I studied her.
\n\u201cTry me,\u201d she said coyly as she gripped me firmly through my pants.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Phew, you go girl!!!<\/p>\n

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\u2019s moved on and married, and when he learns that she hasn\u2019t he decides to move back home to get back the girl he\u2019s never gotten over.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll still love you \u2026 I\u2019ll still love you in a week, in a month, and in three years. I\u2019ll still love you for the rest of my life. You did that to me, and you can\u2019t change it. No matter where you go or what you do, I will still love you.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a really intense relationship. We don\u2019t 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\u2019s in a relationship with a great guy, and life is going well until Dean unexpectedly shows up and tilts her world on its axis.<\/p>\n

From their first encounter in the present, the friendship and genuine affection for each other is evident. Dallas\u2019 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\u2019s involved with somebody else, Dean makes no secret of the fact that he wants her back.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the other half of my heart and I can\u2019t live without it.\u201d He gripped my shoulders, his forehead to mine. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh my God, the angst in this book is painful! I don\u2019t 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\u2019t like the way it was handled Dallas should have cut poor Josh loose WAY earlier than she did. She knew she didn\u2019t love him, and regardless of Dean being back in town, she wasn\u2019t 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\u2019 story and as the past slowly unfolds through flashbacks and devastating revelations, my heart broke for both of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine a worse kind of hell than seeing you in front of me again and not being able to touch you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cYou thought what we had was beautiful. I did, too, except while you were gone, I made it ugly.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The beauty of this story is in Dean\u2019s 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\u2019s when I really became involved in the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want all of you, Dallas. Every single piece. Even the ones I broke.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dallas is a really strong heroine, and though I had some issues with how she handled everything…<\/p>\n

<\/span>Spoiler<\/div>
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. <\/div><\/div>\n

…But once they dealt with their issues, I started to really like her. And Dean\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2019s 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 \u2013 more than once.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

I didn’t love it, but still a great read – 3.5 stars.<\/p>\n

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The Reluctant Romantics series<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\"Pageflex\u00a0 \"The\u00a0 \"The<\/p>\n

The Fall (#1)
\n<\/strong>Review<\/a>
\nBuy:\u00a0 Kindle Ebook<\/a>\u00a0 |\u00a0 Paperback<\/a><\/p>\n

The Mind (#1.5)<\/strong>
\nBuy:\u00a0 Kindle Ebook<\/a><\/p>\n

The Heart (#2)<\/strong>
\nBuy:\u00a0 Kindle Ebook<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buy:\u00a0 Kindle Ebook\u00a0 |\u00a0 Paperback Review \u201cWe got it right the first time. We just fucked up a little along the way. We weren’t perfect\u2014 never have been\u2014 but we were beautiful. We still are.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","yasr_overall_rating":3.5,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"Product","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,24,29],"tags":[333,48,334],"class_list":["post-7224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-romance","category-second-chance-romance","category-steamy","tag-kate-stewart","tag-review","tag-the-reluctant-romantics"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/The-Fall.jpg?fit=150%2C223&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gaNL-1Sw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}