A review by iam
Falls Chance Ranch by Rolf and Ranger

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book, or rather this entire series, means so much to me it’s hard to explain my love for it even after years fo first reading it.

Content warnings include: suicidal thoughts, shooting of an animal in self defense, hallucinations from lack of sleep and other extreme forms of self neglect, obsessive-compulsive behaviours and perfectionism, domestic discipline that features spanking, being sent to stand in corners or to bed early and decisions of another's actions. 

 Can you fall in love with a place?
 It was the first time in his life that Dale had been aware of being attached to a piece of ground, to having emotions stirred and strongly rooted in land. It was more than just appreciation of the beauty of the ranch. There was a strength of emotion connected to the house, its sounds, its growing familiarity. Emotion attached to the quiet, the colours, the contours of the land, its space, its consistency. [...]This was a sense every morning of looking from the window of his room across the green pastures to the rustling aspen woods with a sense of hello, I'm glad to see you.
 It was natural enough and it was the heart of Philip's original plan as Dale understood it. Bring in a man, tired and run down and bitter with the overcomplicated business of living, and put him in this place where the world was fresh and beautiful and every part of living and working was tangible, natural, the same as had been touched by man since the beginning of time. It was understandable any man should awaken to this place with this sense of suddenly being alive again, and to love it in response, and Dale was aware that this was his first love of this kind. Of the land and everything that belonged to it: including the intrinsic parts of it named Paul, Flynn, Riley and Jasper.  Like most first loves, it was almost painful in its acuity. 

Falls Chance Ranch is the beginning of a long, hard and emotional journey of self-discovery, love and family.

At the center of it is Dale, young, successful and hard-working on the surface and an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist deeper down. He's a businessman who has a breakdown due to over-working himself and is sent to a ranch to recuperate and get his life back on track. There he not only falls in love with the place, the work and the lifestyle, but also with the men living there: gruff but gentle Flynn, cheerful and empathetic Riley, comfortable and kind Paul and spiritual and elusive Jasper.

There really isn’t much plot to speak of – the book is almost entirely character driven, and even then it’s  very slow, even repetetive in places, but I would argue that that’s almost part of its charm.

Even aside from that, it’s definitely not for everyone – domestic discipline is a huge part of it, which took me a while to get used to. The way it’s first introduced in the story feels a bit weird and not entirely comfortable, the authors have acknowledged that it was written with a lot of artistic freedom in the „these characters know what they are doing“ department and they would write it very differently now if they edited it.

Edits would probably do the book some good in general, but it’s not in the cards right now, this is a free-to-read work online that was written for fun, and further and completely honestly, I do not mind that much. I love it as it is.

The writing is well done for the most part, I was and am always able to completely lose myself in it - only after several rereads, when I already knew all the details, I began noticing small mistakes or that it doesn't always flow perfectly.

Speaking of mistakes: looking at later books in the series, some of the things said and happening in book1 are not entirely consistent with the rest. It's minor things and people who're reading for the first and probably the second time won't notice. Additionally, this was written in 2007, possibly even earlier, and I'm more than willing to excuse lack of 100% consistency to chapters that came out now in 2018, especially considering this is written for fun and not professionally edited or published.

This series taught me a lot about a variety of topics, but mostly it helped me reflect on myself through identifying with the characters and listening to them, which is something no other book has ever done for me.
And all that despite the occasional weird statements that I don't always agree with.

As a side note: something that is very important to me is how horses are written when they are featured in books.  Falls Chance Ranch does this wonderfully and is at the top of my list of books with well written horses. And there are a lot of horses – all of them with personalities and their own heads, all wonderful additions to the story and often delightful to read about.