SYNOPSIS:
For months I stood by, an understudy waiting in the wings, preparing for my time to shine.I never imagined he would watch in the audience that night.
Canon Holt.
Famous film director. Fascinating. Talented. Fine
Before I could catch my breath, everything changed. I went from backstage Broadway to center stage Hollywood.
From being unknown, to my name, Neevah Saint, on everyone’s lips.
Canon casts me in a star-studded Harlem Renaissance biopic, catapulting me into another stratosphere.
But stars shine brightest in the dead of night.
Forbidden attraction, scandal and circumstances beyond my control jeopardize my dream.
Could this one shot—the role of a lifetime, the love of a lifetime—cost me everything?
A story for the ages.
Kennedy Ryan writes a story my goodness does she write a story; she writes a big book with multiple themes that spread across the spectrum. She tosses everything and the kitchen sink in there so you know it’s a big story that will scratch all of your itch.
However, this for me, is by far the most audacious work of hers and everything she does is incredibly audacious; it has the three Kennedy Ryan signatures; research, representation and romance. From the research comes a richly woven and finely told story that will take your breath away. Every time I read this story or listen to it, especially listen to it, it takes my breath away.
REEL is an ambitious novel that delivers.
It is a story about Neevah and Canon with an adjacent story of Desi Blue a long-forgotten icon who had to leave her home in the US a la Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin etc. to make it in Paris. Make it she did, but her return home saw her lose all that. Neevah is an actress whose big break comes with this movie and Canon is the director of the movie trying to remind and inform the world about Desi Blue and her talent, about stories of Black icons whose work is being forgotten. This could be true about any of our icons from back in the day who had to leave home to find better elsewhere.
Yes, it is a story within a story and it made me want to actually see both movies; that of Desi’s and of Neevah and Canon.
Kennedy Ryan is a powerful writer because she has the uncanny ability to take us inside the stories, the characters and explore the worlds within. Neevah also suffers from a chronic illness whilst still trying to hold on to her dream. She gets it, the magnitude of this story, she really gets it and the importance of it. It is bigger than her big break.
We are taken into the lives of both Desi and the love story between Neevah and Canon and how they navigate Hollywood and its shenanigans when it comes to telling Black stories. We are thrown into locations and see them unfold on the page, we are taken inside the mind’s eye of Canon the director, not merely the telling of the story but the technique and dialogue and how they all come together on page. Neevah gives the performance of her life, it could very well be on screen as we watch the story of Desi come to life. The emotion she emits we feel it, the heaviness of the time we feel her carry it and I dare you not to shed many tears and breathe too many sighs of relief. A story that is both tender and revealing, magnificent as it is massive. Important. Important. Important.
When I tell you Kennedy Ryan did her glorious one with this, she really did. This is a powerful novel that elucidates how far we have been fighting for recognition and for our stories to be told, and how much more fight is still left to be fought. This is a life story, cloaked in a love story and an unforgettable life.
Just as good is the author’s note at the end of the novel or audio book where Ryan tells us how she came about these stories and the truth behind the narrative.
If you read one book this year, make it this one and then everything else by Kennedy Ryan.