In the Event of Love Review — Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: A queer Hallmark Christmas movie with the sex left in — snowy, warm and genuinely explicit, undercut by a narrator a large minority of readers cannot stand and a conflict the book repeats rather than resolves.

Best for: Readers who want holiday comfort, a tree farm in the snow and open-door heat, and who care more about atmosphere and found family than about whether the central misunderstanding holds up.

Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — explicit open door)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.5/5 — a 3.56 Goodreads average across 9,783 ratings, and 45% of them are three stars or lower)

Tropes: Second chance, friends-to-lovers, small-town Christmas, save-the-farm, found family, bisexual leads, grief and family repair, first-person POV, big-gesture ending.

In the Event of Love by Courtney Kae is the first of two Fern Falls novels, a Kensington-published contemporary sapphic romance set in a small Californian mountain town at Christmas, in which LA event planner Morgan Ross, retreating home after a tabloid blow-up, finds that the fundraiser she has taken on is meant to save the tree farm of Rachel Reed — the best friend she kissed once, seven years ago, and has not spoken to since.

It has a 3.56 average across 9,783 Goodreads ratings, a Publishers Weekly review calling Kae’s debut delightful, and a spread rougher than the average suggests: 45% of those ratings are three stars or lower, and 4,138 StoryGraph reviews put it lower still at 3.46. Both halves of that split are worth understanding first.

What Is In the Event of Love About?

It is three books at once, and the reviews make more sense once you separate them. It is a holiday romance, meaning the full Hallmark apparatus — the fundraiser, the snow, the tree farm, the developer, the speech to the whole town. It is a small-town romance, so the town is a character and its survival the real stakes, carried by an ensemble of neighbours and an entirely unremarked queer community. And it is an adult romance with the door wide open — the one thing the form it imitates cannot do.

Morgan comes home with none of what she needs: a career she has just set fire to, a father whose drinking she has spent years not discussing, and no practice at asking rather than assuming. The novel is narrated in the first person by Morgan, and no reviewer I found mentions a Rachel chapter, so you spend the book inside the head of the woman doing the assuming — which buys the comic voice and costs plenty else.

What Makes This Sapphic Holiday Romance Work

• The town: Fern Falls is the most consistently praised element by a distance. Readers name the tree farm, the snowed-in main street and the small businesses first, and the town’s ordinary queerness right after.
• The secondary cast: Ben the baker, Adam the mechanic and Morgan’s friend group collect more affection in the reviews than either lead — enough that book two gives Ben and Adam their own book.
• The heat: romance.io files it in the “explicit open door” band, 4 of 5, and reviewers treat the spice as the whole point of difference from the films it pastiches.
• The bisexual representation: both leads are explicitly bisexual on the page, which blog reviewers repeatedly flag as rare in second-chance holiday romance.
• The grief: Morgan’s dead mother and her father’s drinking are where the comedy stops, and The Lesbian Review singles those scenes out as the book’s most affecting writing.

Book Synopsis

Morgan Ross plans events for people who can afford to be photographed at them. One tabloid-worthy night later, her Los Angeles firm needs her elsewhere for a while — and elsewhere, inconveniently, is Fern Falls, the mountain town she left at eighteen. Her boss frames the trip as a rest. Morgan reads it as a sentence.

The job waiting for her is a fundraiser, and the client is the Reed family Christmas tree farm. Which means Rachel Reed, Morgan’s best friend right up until the night they kissed and the whole thing came apart. Rachel runs the farm now, hauls Morgan bodily out of the freezing mud on her first day back, and appears to carry none of the grudge Morgan has carried for seven years. The farm is in trouble, and so is the town: a developer with a personal history in Morgan’s family wants the main street flattened for an outlet mall, and the Reeds’ land is the last thing in the way.

So Morgan does the one thing she is good at. She plans. Vanilla lattes, acoustic guitars, a barn under the pines, the best event of her career staged where she swore she would never return. What she has not planned for is how fast seven years of silence turns into something neither woman will say out loud, or what happens when the misunderstanding that broke them at eighteen walks back in wearing a Christmas sweater.

My Review

Fern Falls is the reason this book has nearly ten thousand ratings. Kae builds the town with real affection — the farm, the snowbound main street, the café, neighbours who know each other’s business — and, more unusually, as a place where being queer is unremarkable. No coming-out plot, no menace, no homophobia as cheap tension. For a lot of readers that is the whole appeal.

The other genuine pleasure is that the book is not chaste. It performs a Hallmark Christmas movie on purpose and then puts explicit sex inside it, which is exactly what the form it copies will never do. Underneath the comedy runs a seam of real grief: Morgan’s mother is dead, her father drinks, and those pages are the novel’s most convincing writing.

Where it struggles is Morgan, and this is not a private irritation of mine — it is the single most repeated criticism in the reviews. Reader after reader calls her immature, presumptuous, exhausting, and the mechanism they name is precise: nearly every conflict in the novel exists because Morgan decides she knows what someone else is thinking and acts on it without asking. That could be a flaw the book works with, except the book runs on it. Multiple reviewers point out that the misunderstanding which separated Morgan and Rachel seven years earlier recurs almost unchanged, with both women reacting as they did the first time, and is cleared up without either having meaningfully moved. One sums it up: there is not a lot of talking, and that is a problem for the characters and for the story. The knock-on is the one that matters most in a romance — a striking number of readers report feeling no chemistry at all between two women who lust before they re-acquaint.

One expectation to reset. It is sold on Casey McQuiston and Alexandria Bellefleur comparisons and an Ali Hazelwood blurb promising a slow burn, and it is neither: it is a fast, sentimental Hallmark pastiche, and StoryGraph readers put 90% of the pace votes at medium or fast against 9% at slow. If you came for a literary romcom in the McQuiston register, calibrate down. If you want the Hallmark movie explicit, this is exactly that, and the corniness people complain about is the genre doing what the genre does.

My honest note: A warm, well-built town wrapped around a narrator a large share of the readership cannot stand. If a protagonist who assumes instead of asking ruins a book for you, this will ruin it. If you are here for snow, spice and a queer town where nobody has to explain themselves, it delivers.

Element	In In the Event of Love
Central relationship	Morgan Ross & Rachel Reed — an LA event planner and the tree-farm owner she kissed once at eighteen
Core tropes	Second chance, friends-to-lovers, small-town Christmas, save-the-farm, forced proximity, found family
Setting	Fern Falls, a fictional Californian mountain town, and the Reed family Christmas tree farm
Heat level	4/5 — explicit open door
Series	Fern Falls book 1 — complete HEA, reads as a standalone; book 2 is male/male and the series ends there
Content notes	Explicit sexual content, parental death, alcoholism and adult-child-of-an-alcoholic dynamics, grief, abandonment, divorce, briefly referenced cancer and a car accident

How Spicy Is In the Event of Love?

A 4/5. romance.io files it under “explicit open door” — one band below its top rating — and readers treat the heat as the reason to pick this up rather than watch the film it resembles. The scenes are fully on the page, they recur, and more than one reviewer notes the book is far more explicit than its illustrated cover implies.

The element worth flagging is tonal rather than a content question. The sex scenes are the part of the prose readers argue about hardest: several call them cringeworthy, others name them the best thing in the book. No reviewer I found flags specific kink content or raises a consent question. For the same band elsewhere, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care and Written in the Stars both sit at 4/5 explicit open door.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a Hallmark Christmas movie with the sex left in, you read for setting and found family more than plot logic, you want two openly bisexual leads in a town with no homophobia in it, and you want a complete happily-ever-after.

You may want to skip it if: a narrator who assumes rather than asks will exhaust you, you need a romance’s obstacle to be something other than a failure to talk, you were promised a slow burn and will feel cheated by immediate attraction, or big sentimental speeches make you wince.

In short: a genuinely warm queer holiday romance built on a narrator and a misunderstanding that a substantial minority of readers refuse to forgive.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

There is no viral moment here and there never was one. What this debut had instead was institutional support in unusual quantity: a Publishers Weekly review in June 2022 calling it a delightful debut, a Library Journal notice praising the banter, blurbs from Ali Hazelwood, Helen Hoang and Alison Cochrun, and holiday-list placements at Buzzfeed, Book Riot and Autostraddle. Kensington and the author’s press page both call that PW review starred; PW’s own listing carries no star marker. That machinery is why the book holds 9,783 Goodreads ratings, five times the sequel’s — and part of why the average sits where it does, because plenty of readers who would never otherwise pick up a sapphic Christmas romance were handed one. Two caveats: searches for organic BookTok activity turned up nothing, and I could not complete a Reddit read this session, so treat that as unverified rather than empty.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The town, first and most consistently — Fern Falls, the tree farm and the snow, with the queer community woven in and never explained. Then the secondary cast, which draws warmer notices than the leads. The heat is named as a feature rather than a garnish, and blog reviewers single out the bisexual representation as the thing this book does that its shelf-mates do not. Notably, a minority praise exactly what the majority attacks: at least one blogger calls Morgan’s narrative voice fun and well-judged throughout, which suggests the biggest complaint here is taste rather than craft failure.

What readers argue about and complain about: Morgan, above everything. Immature, presumptuous and annoying are the recurring words, and the mechanism is always that she assumes instead of asking. Second, the conflict engine: reviewers note repeatedly that the seven-year-old rupture repeats in the present with the same reactions and no growth in between, and that the communication problem is never resolved. Third, chemistry — a striking number say they felt nothing between two women lusting after each other long before they know each other again. After that they spread out: a developer subplot resolved with no effort at all, thinly drawn side characters, speeches used to move people, cringe at the sex scenes, and an epilogue at least two independent reviewers call bolted on. That last is a genuine split — Audible listeners tag the epilogue “satisfying” often enough for it to surface as a highlight on the product page.

The standalone question worth asking first: this one resolves. Morgan and Rachel get a full happily-ever-after, the town plot closes, and readers consistently treat it as a standalone. Fern Falls book two, In the Case of Heartbreak, arrived in April 2023 and gives Ben and Adam their own romance — a male/male book, so it does not continue the sapphic thread, and the series stops there with no third announced. It scores 3.53 across 1,656 ratings: the same number on a sixth of the readership. If audio is your route in, Melissa Moran narrates for Tantor across nine hours twenty-four minutes, rated 4.37 by 290 Audible listeners — three-quarters of a star above Goodreads.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does In the Event of Love end on a cliffhanger?

No. Morgan and Rachel get a complete happily-ever-after and the town storyline resolves in the same book. Readers consistently describe it as a standalone.

How spicy is In the Event of Love?

A 4/5. romance.io rates the steam level “explicit open door,” one band below its top rating. The scenes are on the page and they recur, and readers treat the heat as a main draw.

Is In the Event of Love a slow burn?

Not really, despite the blurb. The attraction is live from the reunion onward, and StoryGraph readers put 90% of the pace votes at medium or fast against 9% at slow.

Do I need to read the Fern Falls books in order?

No. Book two, In the Case of Heartbreak, follows two secondary characters and is a male/male romance rather than a continuation. The series is two books and no third has been announced.

Is there an audiobook of In the Event of Love?

Yes — narrated by Melissa Moran for Tantor, running nine hours twenty-four minutes. Listeners rate it 4.37 across 290 Audible ratings, well above the Goodreads figure.

If You Loved In the Event of Love, Read These Next

Readers wanting the same second-chance engine with a surer hand land most often on Here We Go Again, Alison Cochrun’s road-trip romance between two women who were inseparable as teenagers. If the coming-home-to-a-town-that-knows-you plot is the draw, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care does a sharper version at the same 4/5 heat. And Written in the Stars is by Alexandria Bellefleur, one of the two authors this book is sold against — the fairest test of whether the comparison holds.

For more in this register, browse our full sapphic second-chance romance list or the complete Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

In the Event of Love set out to be the queer Hallmark Christmas movie that did not exist, and on atmosphere it managed it: the town is lovely, the community is warm and unremarked, the heat is real and on the page. It is also built on a narrator who assumes instead of asking, a conflict that repeats rather than resolves, and a villain plot that evaporates when the book needs it gone. Whether that trade works depends on how much you need a romance’s obstacle to make sense — but if you want snow, spice and a queer small town for a December weekend, it delivers. Check In the Event of Love on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, In the Event of Love ranks as a mainstream sapphic holiday comfort read — warm, snowy and genuinely explicit, held back by a narrator and a conflict readers argue with, and best approached for the town and the tree farm rather than for the logic of the romance.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 3.5/5

• ✓ 3.56 average across 9,783 Goodreads ratings
• ✓ Setting and queer community carry it
• ✓ Publishers Weekly reviewed the debut warmly
• ✓ 45% of ratings are three stars or lower

Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

• ✓ Second-chance premise is well chosen
• ✓ Heat lands and readers say so
• ✓ Reunion attraction is immediate, not slow
• ✓ Chemistry is the most-disputed element

Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

• ✓ 70% on StoryGraph call the cast loveable
• ✓ Secondary cast warmer than the leads
• ✓ Ben earns his own sequel
• ✓ Morgan is the loudest complaint in the reviews

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.6/5

• ✓ Publishers Weekly calls the debut delightful
• ✓ Library Journal praises the banter
• ✓ Comic narration wins genuine defenders
• ✓ Speeches and sex scenes draw cringe complaints

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.7/5

• ✓ Dead mother and drinking father land
• ✓ 57% of StoryGraph readers marked it emotional
• ✓ The Lesbian Review singles out the grief
• ✓ Villain subplot resolves without cost

Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5

• ✓ romance.io’s explicit open door band
• ✓ Fully on the page and recurring
• ✓ The point of difference from Hallmark
• ✓ Scene-level prose divides readers

Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

• ✓ Complete HEA, no cliffhanger
• ✓ Works as a standalone
• ✓ Audible listeners tag the epilogue satisfying
• ✓ Developer plot collapses in a few pages

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.6/5

• ✓ Seasonal comfort re-read every December
• ✓ Audiobook rated 4.37 by listeners
• ✓ Town and tree farm reward a return
• ✓ Sequel switches to a male/male pair

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