"I was stupid then, but now I'm ready to beat her at her own game."
That line hit me somewhere around the thirty-minute mark while I was repositioning my second monitor and trying not to knock over my cold brew. Frida was doing that thing where she sits directly on my keyboard like she's personally offended by my client's brand guidelines, and I remember pausing the audio just to sit with that sentence. Because oh, I know that energy. That "I'm going to pretend I don't care about you so hard it becomes my entire personality" energy. Madoc and Fallon have it in spades, and Penelope Douglas writes it like she's been eavesdropping on every toxic situationship you've ever had.
The Kind of Tension Abuela Would've Called "Pecado"
So here's the thing about Rival - it's book two in the Fall Away series, and it centers on Madoc and Fallon, who used to live in the same house (his dad married her mom, yes it's THAT kind of mess). She was cruel to him during the day and left her bedroom door open at night. He was young and dumb and went through it anyway. Two years later she's back from boarding school and neither of them has processed a single emotion in a healthy way. Not one.
And I ate it up.
The dual timeline - past and present - works because Douglas doesn't just give us "we were hot for each other back then." She gives us the specific cruelty. Fallon cutting Madoc down in front of people, then the quiet vulnerability behind closed doors. Madoc's ego bruised so badly he turned it into armor. There's a scene where he publicly humiliates her at a party as payback and you can feel both of them breaking, even though neither will admit it. That push-pull dynamic is addictive when it's done right, and Douglas mostly does it right. The same kind of compulsive, emotionally bruising back-and-forth wrecked me in Sex and Vanity too, though that one dresses its damage in much more expensive clothes.
I say mostly because - and I love this series, I do - Rival doesn't quite hit the raw nerve that Bully did. The first book had me shaking. This one had me invested, engaged, sometimes breathless, but the emotional stakes feel slightly more manufactured. Like Douglas knew the formula worked and leaned into it hard. The revenge-games structure is fun but occasionally tips into "okay, we get it, you're both stubborn" territory around hours four and five before the real vulnerability cracks through.
But when it cracks? MY HEART. The climax of this book wrecked me. Fallon's walls finally coming down, the raw admission of what she actually felt all those years - I ugly-cried at the kitchen table at like 2 PM on a Tuesday. Diego jumped off the couch. Frida didn't even flinch. (She's seen worse from me.)
Abuela would have loved this one. She lived for the moment in her telenovelas when the woman finally stops pretending she hates him and just... collapses into the truth. That's exactly what happens here, and it felt like a punch.
About That Breathing Thing (Let's Talk About It)
Okay. Abby Craden and Nelson Hobbs narrate, and having both a male and female voice for the alternating POVs is the right call. You're not guessing whose head you're in. Nelson Hobbs gives Madoc this cocky edge that softens at exactly the right moments - when he's alone, when he's remembering, when he's lying to himself about not caring.
Abby Craden is where it gets complicated. Her emotional delivery at the climax? Genuinely powerful. The way she says Fallon's name with this anguished weight during the big confrontation scene - that's the kind of narrator moment I live for. She understood the assignment emotionally.
But. There's this hitch of breath after almost every line. Like a tiny inhale-pause that becomes a rhythm you can't unhear once you notice it. For the first couple hours I didn't clock it. By hour five I was hyper-aware. It's not a dealbreaker for me - I listen at 1.0x and I'm patient - but I can absolutely see how it would drive some people up the wall. If you're sensitive to mouth sounds or narrator breathing patterns, fair warning. It's persistent.
Who Gets to Ugly-Cry and Who Should Keep Scrolling
This book felt like staying up too late texting someone you know is bad for you but you can't stop. If enemies-to-lovers with a side of step-sibling angst and genuine emotional damage sounds like your thing, get in here. If you need your romance protagonists to communicate like adults before the 80% mark, this will test you. Hard.
Content-wise: there's abuse, self-harm themes, explicit scenes, and some dark emotional territory. Douglas doesn't shy away from ugly feelings, which I respect, but go in knowing this isn't a cozy Sunday romance. This is a rainy-Wednesday-at-midnight romance.
The vibes are immaculate if you're in the right headspace. Just maybe keep tissues nearby for the last two hours.
My Heart Filed This Under "Complicated But Worth It"
Rival isn't the best Fall Away book - that crown still belongs to Bully for me - but it's a solid, sometimes devastating listen that earns its emotional payoffs even when the middle sags. The dual narration elevates it past what it would be on the page. And that climax scene? I'm still thinking about Abby Craden's voice breaking on that line three days later. Nine and a half hours well spent, breathing hitches and all.
