Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: The Harder We Fall

AUTHOR: Rebecca Raine

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 280 pages

RELEASE DATE: March 29, 2021

BLURB: 

For years, I’ve been bound by sleeplessness and sorrow. His voice threatens to set me free.

Insomnia. It’s part of the penance I pay for my greatest mistake. But when an ill-timed doze behind the wheel of my car nearly introduces me to a pole, I know something has to change.

Sleep with Me, a locally-made meditation app, promises a cure. I don’t expect it to work. Nor do I expect to become enthralled by the voice of its creator, Sam Stephenson. His ability to coax forth my nightly surrender is unnerving. I have to meet this man and learn the secret behind his techniques, so I can evict him from my head—and still get a good night’s sleep.

In person, the quiet and reclusive Sam is his own kind of complicated. He needs my business skills as much as I need his meditation skills and we forge an unlikely partnership. But the attraction between us soon flares into passion and, as we grow closer, I start to long for more than my guilty conscience will allow.

I have no right to love, not after the damage I’ve done. How can I give Sam all he deserves, when our chance at a happy ending was ruined before we even met?

REVIEW: 

Where is the 6 Heart rating when I need it?  10 Hearts?  Rebecca Raine’s The Harder We Fall deserves all the hearts.  

I’ve read a lot of excellent M/M romance books, but it’s rare that one sinks into my consciousness and just lingers there.  I wanted to read this book in one sitting, but logistically couldn’t (I had to work – ugh adulting).  The hours I had to wait to get back to it were downright painful.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  I needed to get back to Tristan and Sam to see that they were alright, that they would be alright.  So fair warning:  The Harder We Fall and its two beautiful but broken men will embed themselves in your heart, until you feel like it will burst if you don’t share with someone, anyone, everyone, how amazing this book is.

I am making a deliberate choice in this review not to tell you much about the plot.  Why?  Because there’s a natural tension that develops as you read this story and start to get to know Tristan and Sam.  Ms. Raine drops breadcrumbs for us to follow on our journey with these men.  Just like Tristan and Sam yearn to understand all the pieces of the other, of the events that shaped them, the trauma they’ve experienced and the scars that they bear, so do we.  As the story unfurls before us, we wonder what happened before and what happens next.  We ache with the need to know.  This anticipation and accompanying tension are, in my view, an integral part of the full experience of this book.  It’s something you need to feel, and I want you to feel it.

So what will I tell you?  Just broad outlines:  Tristan is a successful businessman who lives in self-imposed isolation.  He has no friends and a strained relationship with his parents.  His health is failing him mainly because of his chronic insomnia.  Traumatic events play on repeat in his minds-eye.  Nightmares haunt him.  Sleep is a place of anguish not peace.  So he avoids it.  When we meet Tristan, we see a man who has virtually destroyed his life paying a penance he believes is due.

Tristan is grief-stricken, but it’s grief he thinks he’s caused.  So he wears guilt like a cloak.  Always there keeping the pain in and blocking out anything that would provide him with relief because he doesn’t think he deserves it.  This story is so immersive that we feel like we are under the cloak with Tristan, trying to protect ourselves from the active pain and suffering that endlessly rains down on him. 

Then Sam Stephenson’s dulcet tones invade Tristan’s mind when Tristan tries out Sam’s Sleep With Me meditation app.  Sam offers Tristan relief.  He tells Tristan he doesn’t have to give up his burden – Tristan’s self-flagellation would never allow that – but he can put down his burden, at least for the night, so he can sleep.  Tristan hits a point where he is desperate enough to finally accept the respite.  So Sam helps Tristan sleep, and sleeping helps him function and stay alive.  But it also amplifies his guilt.  Tristan has brought to life his own Scylla and Charybdis and trapped himself between them.

Sam has his own scars and crosses to bear.  Ms. Raine delivers an astonishing portrayal of Sam grappling with his crippling social anxiety disorder and its debilitating effect on his life.  It’s astonishing because it’s so. damn. accurate.  And real.  The authenticity of it hit me hard.  Sam’s bright spirit and indefatigable will not to buckle under and give in is simultaneously heartbreaking and redemptive.  Tristan’s trauma may be more identifiable, even understandable, but Sam’s somehow felt more impactful because of its pervasiveness.  It’s not tied to an isolated, devastating event that Sam can mark as the cause of his difficulties.  It’s not obvious or pronounced.  This is something Sam has, and will, deal with for his whole life and many people may not even realize how he suffers.  Have your tissues at the ready. 

No doubt, The Harder We Fall is an angsty read, but it has a definite HEA that will make you rejoice.  It’s poignant, meaningful and very rewarding.  I can’t imagine not having read this beautifully, expertly crafted story.  Or not having met Tristan and Sam.

Ms. Raine’s writing demonstrates her obvious skill at constructing sentences, paragraphs and pages of exquisitely expressive, crafted words.  She deftly spins out a story with just the right pacing and emphasis.  But her ability to impactfully convey complex emotional content in a straightforward, non-inflammatory way, without melodrama, is what sets her apart.  She puts the words on the page and lets them speak for themselves without hitting us over the head with the meaning or overblowing the emotional content to make a point.  When I reviewed her book, The Experiment, last year, I remarked on this same quality because it stood out to me then, just as it does now.  It’s a rare thing.  The restraint shown in not overdoing.

Rebecca Raine is an author that doesn’t get enough attention.  I truly hope you will read this review, read The Harder We Fall and spread the word.  When I read The Experiment, Ms. Raine was a new author to me.  That book absolutely and unexpectedly floored me.  It ultimately landed on my Best Books of 2020 list.  Coming into The Harder We Fall, my expectations were set higher since I now knew the quality of her work.  And yet, still, The Harder We Fall managed to blow me away. There is no doubt in my mind this will be on my Best Books of 2021 list.  My hope is that I get to enjoy more content from this talented author this year.

RATING:  (but really 6+ Hearts)

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon