review: the falling in love montage
the falling in love montage- ciara smith
summary: after a change encounter with rom-com connoisseur ruby, our main character saoirse dumps her romanceless summer plans to live out all the best rom-com cliches.
genre: ya, romance
girl this was cute. look, it was the first wlw book of the holidays and i must say we started off strong. this book is full of sweet, heartfelt and emotional moments that never miss a beat.
saoirse is a wonderful main character. i appreciate that her being a lesbian is never the main focus of the story, for her this is never an internal dilemma. her main conflict comes with the battle she faces at home and how to share that with the people in her life that care about her. saoirse has gone through a bad breakup but really never cared about that lol. ruby too is a really complex character who's does a great job at juxtaposing saoirse being happy, kind and really, really into talking about feelings. she makes for a great love interest. there is this kinda major plot point that. the other side characters are really charming too, they all felt real and compelling sometimes even more than the main characters.
the romance in this book was fine, cute and enjoyable. but honestly was never my favourite aspect of the book. all of the rom-com moments were nice and never felt overused, always refreshing. where this book really shone was its tackling of dementia. saoirse's mother suffers with dementia throughout the book and is a constant source of conflict for her, both internally and externally. its refreshing to see this presented in such a way that really makes you think about what life is like knowing you might have the same fate as your mother, who doesn't even remember who you are.
is life worth living if you're just going to forget it? can someone who remember me know me still love me?
overall, this book is a great first look into the genre for anyone interested. i enjoyed the story, characters and the moral debates the book presented. it does a fantastic job of meshing together the serious and the not-so-serious into neatly wrapped story.
(not to spoil but i wasn't really a fan of the ending but thats just me being a hopeless romantic- which is why i rate this more on the average than being great)
rating: 3/5