Falls From Grace - Ruby Landers

You know those theatres that have the screen curve around you so you can see the main event going on right in front, but also the side action if you move your head slightly. Immersion surround sound visual spectacular. Generally you’re sitting in a bean bag and the cinema leaves a generous twenty minutes to haul yourself out of those bean bags before they let the next group in.

Falls From Grace is less of the hauling, more of the total immersion. Ruby Landers creates a cinema of feels, and plot, and character development, and angst, and yearning. And love. So much of it. Love between the two MCs; Savannah and Brynn. It’s a romance so you know it will be a HEA, but oh! The journey. It’s a secret crush, forced proximity, friends to lovers, and a slow burn story, wrapped up in the life of a famous singer—Savannah—and a woman who’s hiding a secret—Brynn—who suddenly enters the life of Savannah Grace.

The research and attention to detail is outstanding. It’s like Ruby Landers got on the phone to Taylor Swift and said, “Tell me what it’s like to be you. Spare no details.” There are even song lyrics for an imaginary album for imaginary characters and imaginary audiences. Using already existing lyrics is a squillion dollars per syllable so Landers created her own. Instead of a whole page of dialogue, we get a verse and chorus of a song that is perfect for that moment. It’s brilliant.

Meanwhile, the secondary characters are fleshed out and real and have their own arcs which include meddling with cough helping the two disconnected MCs to just ‘kiss already and get out of their own way!’ There are amazing moments between a properly written two year old kiddo—Landers has clearly spent hours reading the same book to a toddler—and Brynn. There are moments between Savannah and band members that are real and perfect. Then there’s the tension between Savannah and Brynn that starts pretty much at the beginning when they first meet until…well, when they don’t meet because Brynn’s secret is discovered. Cue supportive secondary cast.

I liked this book a lot. It’s the first I’ve read of Landers, so I’m looking forward to more immersion, less bean bag gymnastics, as three books make up the Grace Notes series. If book one is anything to go by, I’ll enjoy the ride.