Fall Into You by Posy Roberts

The course of true love never did run smooth. – William Shakespeare

Simon Phillips hates Thomas Schultz. Or at least he hates the fact that Thomas constantly sings with his shirt off, which makes Simon capable of doing little more than focusing on the man’s chest rather than paying attention to tending bar the way Simon’s supposed to. But there’s a very good reason Thomas goes topless on stage, a very good reason that Simon discovers one night in a stolen moment in a hot tub, a moment that begins this couple’s bumpy road to true love.

Fall Into You is a story that maps out the first four years of Thomas and Simon’s relationship, both the good and the bad, and then, of course, there’s the worse, as Thomas’s dream of making it big with his band Sparklebottom (yes, you read that right. Hey, they can’t all be as brilliant as A Flock of Seagulls), takes him on the road and leaves Simon behind with a load of hurt and a lot of things that went left unsaid between the two of them. It was a one step forward/two steps back beginning that nearly ended them before they’d even left the starting line.

Sadly, though, that wasn’t the worse of it all. That comes later on in the form of an affliction that leaves Thomas adrift in a storm of doubt and bitterness; it leaves Simon lost as to what to do for Thomas, and once again, sends them careening off course and into an abyss of depression and hurt and anger and despair.

If you’re getting the impression there’s a lot of angst threaded through this story, you’d be right. This is the building of a relationship that starts and stutters and stops and often suffers from things not being said that should have been said in the pursuit of something neither man has ever felt with anyone else. But woven in among all that conflict, there are also quiet moments of love and happiness. It’s a story set to music, a story of patience pushed to its limits, a story of walls that are disassembled one brick at a time until there’s nothing left between Thomas and Simon but the need to be each other’s safe place to fall.

Fall Into You has put Posy Roberts on my list of authors to watch for. Not only did she tell a story that was sexy and dramatic and romantic, but it was also touching and immensely readable, meaning I kind of didn’t want to put it down at all until I was sure Thomas and Simon were going to reach that all important moment where they could find happiness in even the simplest of things. It was an eleven year journey that cost me no small amount of anxiety along the way, but it was worth it.

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