New Release Review: The Fall by Tal Bauer

Tal Bauer is back and he gave us an incredible gift, the most beautiful MM romance of this year, a story of grief, loss, heartbreak, healing, hope, happiness and so so much love.
It’s quite difficult to write a review for this book without leaving spoilers but I’ll do my best.Torey is a young man, a hockey player who’s not having a great season. He’s not playing well and game after game it all seems to get worse. Torey is also a very lonely man, he doesn’t have any friends and his father, who lives in another continent, is only interested in pushing him to do more. His own teammates and coach don’t care about him.
Torey is invisible, no one sees his pain, no one cares. He’s a breath away from doing something final. But during a game against Tampa, he’s badly hit and he gets a severe concussion. He wakes up the next day and everything has changed.He’s in bed with the Tampa Mutineers captain, Blair Callahan, a gorgeous man who’s clearly in love with him. Torey tries to understand what’s happening but the only thing he knows it’s that a year has passed since the hit and he doesn’t remember anything about this time he lost.
Torey has the opportunity to live a beautiful life, though: he’s great at hockey, his team his having a great season thanks to him, he has the love of a wonderful man and his teammates adore him and they are like family to him. Little by little he gets comfortable in this new life and, especially, he falls in love hard with Blair.

This is when things get complicated because happiness is ripped away from Torey in a heartbeat: he loses everything and he’s left with loneliness and dark and desperation that will make him spiral. This part was very painful but also beautifully written. Every word is like a dagger in the heart of the reader.
Torey, precious, wonderful, special Torey has to start to live again: he’s heartbroken, he can’t have Blair’s love back again, he can only adore him from afar and work to make him proud and help him with the team’s achievements.

Little by little Torey rebuilds his life and fights for his happiness. The first time he got to be this happy, he was also haunted by the insecurity of not remembering. Now he’s haunted by the deja vu of his life before that.

Blair and Torey’s love is beautiful, the soulmates kind of love that Tal Bauer is a master in writing. Their relationship is a slow building of trust, awe, care, passion, love that Torey and Blair have for each other. Blair is thoughtful, tender, strong, the best partner for Torey, they really complete each other like two halves of the same unit. Their happy ending is not easy to grab and they have to fight for it, in and outside the ice, until finally, finally, every piece of the shattered happiness finds its place again. I appreciated Hayes and Torey’s dad very much, they offered the strength Torey and Blair needed when all seemed lost.

There’s a feeling of grief that comes and goes through this book: it comes in waves, it’s stronger sometimes and more subtle other times, just like it happens in real life and I wonder how much of his personal experience Tal Bauer poured into it.

The infinite list of little details in the “before and after” of Torey’s life are the sign of how remarkable Tal Bauer’s writing is: everything goes back to the beginning, fitting perfectly into the story.
Torey and Blair will stay in my heart for a long time: this has been an amazing emotional read, a story impossible to forget.