To Live Truly and Deeply, Like a Kennedy Ryan Character
Kennedy Ryan’s Reel is a testament to truly, deeply living.
I believe artists are tasked with capturing life, whether through words, images, or colors. This is especially true for actors and directors, which is who this story follows. Reel is the love story of Neevah Saint, an actress, and Canon Holt, a director. They fall in love over the course of shooting a biopic about a singer named Dessi Blue.
The Dessi Blue movie is a gripping sub-plot to the story. Ryan states in her author's note that Dessie Blue is fictional, but that she is grounded in the real lives of black artists from the early 20th century. She references James Baldwin, Billie Holiday, Ma Rainey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Adelaide Hall as inspirations for Dessi; she even dedicated the book to a list of black artists! Ryan states: “Reel is a love story, but also a love letter to the scores of Black creatives whose work and accomplishments have gone largely unacknowledged and unsung.” The Dessi Blue movie captures this - a remarkable life forgotten.
Then there are the artists of our love story.
Neevah is an up and coming actress, and is pulled out of obscurity to play Dessi in a massive Harlem Renaissance biopic. In playing the role of a lifetime, she perfectly depicts the artist who overextends herself for others. Without spoiling the book too much you need to know that she has chronic health issues that are aggravated by stress. Neevah struggles with pride. She does not want to let her physical body hold her back or be an inconvenience to others. This makes it impossible for her to ask for help and bleeds into not only her work, but every relationship in her life. Her history with her family is an added obstacle that she must learn to overcome by setting aside her pride if she wants to truly live.
As for our director: this man has run from any personal attachments since losing his mother, the one person he loved most in this world. He does what so many of us do. He hides. How can you lose anyone else, if you don’t let anyone in? As a result he makes his world really small to protect himself. But then he realizes this: “Sometimes attraction is the body's way of keeping a secret from your heart until you're ready to hear it!” (Reel, ch. 65) Neeva has such a pull on him that he has no choice but to surrender his fears and step into a relationship with her. By opening up he starts to fully live again as well. Sometimes our subconscious is the driver guiding us down the path of our life.
Through their relationship, Ryan shows us that attraction does not have to stay solely in the confines of sex, but that our sexual attraction can lead us to other things we also crave. Hands down, the sex in this book was explosive and carnal. These characters’ craving for one another was so palpable that you yearn for the moments when they finally do get together as much as they do. And it’s HOT! As the story progresses, sex morphs from yearning to belonging, to cherishing one another. It felt authentic and purposeful, like they were truly just living in each other's arms.
One of my favorite things was that this story was bookended by two documentaries. They told the stories of women who despite suffering from illnesses lived full, beautiful lives. They understood that each single day was a gift and they lived each day with the intention of living fully.
Ryan masterfully wove a tapestry of life that captured its nuance. It's the goal of every artist to show you a reflection of some corner of life but not everyone can do it with such grace, skill, and fullness as Ryan did.
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Book 2, Score, in a Hollywood Renaissance series,
comes out May 19th!!!
She also has The Close-Up a standalone novella in the same series
