The Stars may rise, and fall is apparently a phantom of the opera inspired story, though I have not watched phantom of the opera and know basically nothing about it we are dragged in to Teru and Rei’s world, which is beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. We get to know Teru who was a drummer but ended up a singer at La Rose Verboten and Rei who had been in a band before, but an accident made it clear he would never preform again, and he wants to help Teru to preform, to achieve greatness, He also vowed to never love again – because who could love someone like him? The both has their struggles and flaws, but that makes them human and very likeable and easy to connect with. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking for both characters, how they search for someone to understand them, for someone to love them... but then fright stop them from opening. Teru is unsure about his sexuality and Rei, he seems to think he’s a monster, that no one can love someone who’s broken and for him, ugly.

This was a very hard book to put down, I kept thinking about it literally 24/7 but it was also a beautiful M/M love story where one ought to forgive oneself, where one open up to love and souls perfect for one another finds each other and I loved every part of it. The book kind of broke my heart and put my heart back together again, I bet maybe 5-6 times… maybe more, I didn’t count. I just want to re-read this right away, I want to squeal, sigh, cry, yell at Teru and Rei to understand how good they are for each other and I want to hug both, especially when they are sad or frustrated. It gave me so much emotions, I loved and kind of hated every part of it, it was such an amazing book that gave me so much feels, I can’t press that enough.

God I wish I could’ve enjoyed this book. I really tried! I wanted to like it so much, but I just couldn’t.

To start with, there’s some things that were great! I loved the setting and it reminded me of the time I myself lived in Japan. I also loved the look at the Visual Kei scene and I did enjoy some of the characters.

But. Well, first of all, the writing was weak. It never gripped me and the characterization felt a bit weak too. I stopped at 33% and in that time, I never really felt like I had a grip on the characters, or at least our protagonist Teru. When I got to the part that enraged me, I was already kind of bored and trawling other reviews, which is never good news.

But the part that pissed me off, oh boy. See our love interest, the Phantom stand-in Rei, has been in a car accident in the past and is physically disabled. There has been extensive damage to his body, he can’t move a whole side of his body, walks with a crutch and it’s clear walking is extremely difficult and painful for him. He hides half of his face behind a mask because of scars (as an aside, I understand that that’s the Phantom reference but this is ye modern times and I can’t imagine any doctor approving of wearing a plastic mask on a scarred skin nonstop, even to SLEEP. like jesus christ why) (also I really don’t like the implications of him always wearing said mask because of “my face is too hideous to look at” but maybe he stops hiding his face later in the book and I’ll never know. None of the other reviews mentioned that). The point of this paragraph is that Rei is disabled and at one point he tells Teru that he’s always in pain and that his pain is ‘immesurable’.

So, pray tell our dear Teru, what the FUCK is this line:
“Just because he acted like an invalid most of the time didn’t mean he really was one.”
This was in response to Teru musing about why he enjoyed hanging out at Rei’s apartment and why Rei doesn’t leave much. It’s just a little throwaway line he thinks, and then changes the subject and thinks about something else.

And it’s disgusting. It’s dismissive and ableist to the core. I’ve had chronic pain and invisible disabilities my whole life and I can’t count the number of times I’ve had this shit told directly to my face. I can’t believe a protagonist thought this about his love interest in a goddamn romance. And since it was something he thought to himself, it can’t even be challenged by anyone and can’t become a teaching moment for Teru to do better. You can tell the author tried really hard to be respectful of Rei’s disabilities, but this kind of cruel throwaway line really shows how deep ableism really is. Why should I cheer for these two people to get together? And no, I’m not saying I want my heroes to be perfect, far from it! I myself sometimes think really shitty things! But I also always immediatelly go ‘whoa dude what the fuck was that, stop that!’. I’d like some of that here.

There’s also a plotline about Teru basically competing with Rei’s dead lover and I can attest that being constantly compared to an ex lover is Not Fun. Not Fun At All. I probably wouldn’tve picked this book up if I knew that was in it.

And finally, I think the opening shows that sometimes, modern adaptations need to be… a bit more adapt to work in our modern times. You mean to tell me that anyone in today’s world would just arrive at an apartment of some shady potential stalker that told them they have a ‘beautiful’ voice on a phone, and THEN drink alcohol this shady person served them? How was Teru dumb enough to do all of this instead of calling the police????

I'll start by saying the story and writing are good, but there are a few things keeping this from getting a higher rating.

First, if the characters are speaking Japanese normally and we read it as English, the lyrics to songs being sung in Japanese should also be in English not in romaji. That's a mistake I see a lot in fanfiction, but it doesn't have a place in a published novel. The translation of the songs is also inconsistent, some aren't translated at all, some are translated line by line and some chunk by chunk. If the lyrics must be in romaji, and again they really shouldn't be, the translation method needs to be consistent. I understand there are some points where there is mixed English and Japanese, but in cases like that the English could be denoted with italics or some such. I also think some specifics about train lines and such should be removed. For people who don't live in Japan those would probably be meaningless, and for people who do it just highlights how much research was done on public aspects while neglecting private aspects of Japanese life.

There were a few editing issues as well. P7 "nerves stand electric on end" I assume this is a mix of hair on end and something with nerves, but it doesn't make sense. P13 "What if it was" should be wasn't. P60 a sentence ends with If the tour went well and the next sentence starts with the same. Even for emphasis that's a bit much. P168 Over the medium should be median. Also I'm not sure what purpose is served by Rei using less contractions than everyone else. On page 10 alone there is "Whenever you are free" instead of you're and "I will give" instead of I'll. If it's supposed to read as him talking unnaturally it works, but I can't figure out why he would.

I really liked the story and writing, but it still needs a bit of work to be a really good book in my opinion.