The Falling in Love Montage Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Updated on October 8, 2026

Verdict: A sharp, funny Irish YA rom-com about two girls staging a summer of romantic-comedy clichés, with a narrator readers either adore or cannot stand and a real story about a mother with early-onset dementia underneath, undercut for romance readers by an ending that does not promise the couple a future.

Best for: Readers who want witty, emotionally honest sapphic YA about grief and growing up, and who care more about the heroine’s journey than about a guaranteed happily ever after.

Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — young adult; kissing only)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.6/5 — a 3.78 Goodreads average across nearly 32,000 ratings, with more than a third at three stars or lower, most of them over the ending)

Tropes: Summer fling, no-strings pact, rom-com montage, grumpy and sunshine, coming of age, family grief, best friend turned ex, new stepmother, summer of firsts.

The Falling in Love Montage is Ciara Smyth’s 2020 debut, a standalone contemporary sapphic young adult novel published by HarperTeen and set in Ireland over one summer, in which a guarded girl who has given up on love agrees to a strictly temporary romance with a rom-com devotee who wants every cliché in the book.

On Goodreads it holds a 3.78 average across 31,894 ratings and more than 5,000 written reviews, and it collected a starred review from Publishers Weekly plus positive notices in Kirkus, Booklist and School Library Journal. Readers are far more divided than the critics: 64% rate it four or five stars, and 36% give it three or fewer. The trade reviews and the low-star readers are mostly talking about different things. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is The Falling in Love Montage About?

This is YA contemporary that looks like a rom-com and reads like a family drama with jokes. The premise — a summer spent deliberately acting out romantic-comedy set pieces — is playful and self-aware, and the characters talk openly about how rarely lesbian stories get the light, happy version. But much of the book’s weight sits elsewhere: Saoirse’s mother has early-onset dementia and lives in a care home, her father is moving on with a new partner, and Saoirse is terrified the illness may be in her own future.

Saoirse is sarcastic, angry and guarded after a bad breakup that also cost her a best friend. Ruby is warm, open and a true believer in rom-coms, with problems of her own. The story is told in Saoirse’s first-person voice, so the reader lives inside her defences — which is exactly why some readers love her and others find her exhausting.

What Makes This Sapphic YA Rom-Com Work

Saoirse’s voice: Her snark is the most praised element. Readers call her funny, sharp and real, and several say she is the reason they loved the book.
The montage premise: Acting out rom-com clichés on purpose gives the romance a playful frame, and readers enjoy the meet-cute and the set pieces.
The family story: Saoirse’s mother’s dementia and her father’s new relationship give the book real emotional weight. Several readers say this, not the romance, is what stayed with them.
The supporting cast: Ruby’s cousin Oliver and Saoirse’s father’s new partner are singled out; one reader says the stepmother figure was the surprise of the book.
The Irish setting: A summer in Ireland after exams, with Irish humour in the dialogue, is a fresh backdrop for YA sapphic romance.

Book Synopsis

Saoirse has had a terrible year. Her girlfriend broke up with her, the fallout cost her a best friend, and her mother’s early-onset dementia means the woman who raised her no longer recognises her. With school finished and university undecided, Saoirse has one rule for the summer: kissing girls at parties is fine, relationships are not. Relationships end, and she has seen enough endings.

Then she meets Ruby. Ruby is bright, generous and in love with romantic comedies, and after a chaotic first encounter that involves rescuing a kitten, she makes Saoirse an offer. They can have a summer romance with every cliché a rom-com montage can supply — the dates, the grand gestures, the whole montage — on one condition: it ends when summer does. No feelings, no future, no risk.

The plan sounds perfect to someone who refuses to get hurt. But Saoirse’s father is getting serious with someone new, her mother is getting worse, and the girl who was only supposed to be a summer fling keeps getting under her defences. The question the book keeps open is whether Saoirse can let herself want something that might not last.

My Review

The voice is the best thing here, and it is a genuinely good one. Saoirse is funny in the specific, dry, self-lacerating way that is hard to write, and her narration does what YA rom-coms rarely manage: it makes the jokes and the pain come from the same place. Reviewers who loved the book keep coming back to her, and the trade reviews praised the same thing.

The second strength is the family story. A mother with early-onset dementia, a father trying to move on, and a teenager caught between them — Smyth writes that with care and without melodrama, and it is the part readers say hit closest to home. School Library Journal calls the book a fun romance with substance, and the substance is mostly this.

Where it struggles is as a romance, and this is not my personal gripe — it is the loudest objection in the low-star reviews. The book is sold as a lesbian rom-com, and it even has its characters complain that lesbian stories rarely get happy endings, but it closes without promising Ruby and Saoirse a future. Two readers in the top 30 reviews say plainly that the couple do not end up together, one calling that a betrayal of the book’s own premise; two four-star readers say they liked the open ending precisely because it refuses easy answers. Behind that sit the narrator split — several readers found Saoirse rude or self-pitying — and one reader who found Ruby boring and the montage itself the least memorable part.

Reset one expectation before you start. The cover and the blurb promise a light summer rom-com. If that is what you want, calibrate: this is a book about grief that happens to contain a romance. If “rom-com” is what made you hesitate because you wanted something with weight, relax — it has plenty.

My honest note: A clever, moving YA novel with one of the best narrators in sapphic YA, sold as something lighter than it is. If you need the couple together at the end, skip it; if you want a funny, honest coming-of-age story about love and loss, read it.

Element	In The Falling in Love Montage
Central relationship	Saoirse & Ruby — a guarded, sarcastic narrator and a warm rom-com believer who agree to a summer-only romance
Core tropes	Summer fling, no-strings pact, rom-com montage, grumpy and sunshine, coming of age, family grief
Setting	Ireland, over the summer after school ends
Heat level	1/5 — young adult, kissing only
Series	Standalone — open-ended for the couple, no sequel
Content notes	Parent with early-onset dementia, a parent moving on with a new partner, a painful breakup, underage drinking, divorce

How Spicy Is The Falling in Love Montage?

Not at all. This is a HarperTeen young adult novel for readers 13 and up, and romance.io does not catalogue it, which is the norm for YA. The romance is kissing and feelings, with nothing beyond that on the page, so it rates 1/5 here. The publisher’s age range and reader reviews agree on that.

If you want the same YA sapphic register with a little more romance at the centre, see our Some Girls Do review; for a YA rom-com with a similar mix of humour and heart, see I Kissed Shara Wheeler.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you love a sharp, sarcastic narrator, you want sapphic YA with real emotional weight, you enjoy books that are funny and sad at once, and you are comfortable with an open ending.

You may want to skip it if: you need the couple together at the end, you find abrasive narrators hard to spend a book with, you want a light, low-stakes rom-com, or dementia in a parent is too close to home.

In short: a funny, honest coming-of-age story that is more about grief than romance.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This is a well-established YA title with a long tail. It came out in June 2020 and has gathered nearly 32,000 Goodreads ratings and 1,730 Amazon ratings at 4.4. Its trade reception was strong: a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which called it an emotionally stirring queer romance, plus Kirkus, Booklist and School Library Journal. The audiobook, narrated by Alana Kerr Collins for HarperCollins, runs 9 hours 53 minutes.

Prefer audio? Listen to The Falling in Love Montage on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Saoirse first, by a distance — readers call her funny, sharp and real, and one who rarely likes narrators says she was their favourite thing in the book. The family story is second, with several readers saying it hit close to home and stayed with them longer than the romance. Third is the rom-com premise itself, and the meet-cute in particular. Fourth is the supporting cast, especially Oliver and the stepmother figure.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ending, above everything. Readers who came for a lesbian rom-com and got an open-ended relationship are the angriest reviewers, and one points out the irony of a book that criticises tragic lesbian stories and then withholds a clear happy ending. The second theme is Saoirse herself: several readers found her rude, self-pitying or hard to like, and one says the book weighs everything down with her angst. Third, the romance: a few readers say they never felt invested in it, and at least one found Ruby pushy rather than sweet. The genuine split is the ending — two four-star readers explicitly praise it for refusing to pretend a teenage romance must be forever.

The standalone question worth asking first: It is a standalone and there is no sequel. The romance does not end with a promise of forever, so if you need that, this is the most important fact on the page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Saoirse and Ruby end up together?

Not definitively. The book ends without promising them a future, and readers disagree about whether that is honest or disappointing. If you need a clear happily ever after, know that going in.

Is The Falling in Love Montage a romance or a rom-com?

Both, and neither quite. It uses rom-com set pieces, but the heart of the book is Saoirse’s grief over her mother’s early-onset dementia.

How spicy is The Falling in Love Montage?

A 1/5. It is a young adult novel with kissing only.

Is there a Falling in Love Montage audiobook?

Yes. It is narrated by Alana Kerr Collins, runs 9 hours 53 minutes and was published by HarperCollins in June 2020.

What age is The Falling in Love Montage for?

The publisher lists it for readers 13 and up. It deals with dementia, a breakup and underage drinking.

Is The Falling in Love Montage a standalone?

Yes. There is no sequel, and the open ending is final.

If You Loved The Falling in Love Montage, Read These Next

For another YA sapphic romance about two girls with opposite outlooks, read Some Girls Do. For a YA rom-com that plays with genre conventions and has a similarly sharp voice, try I Kissed Shara Wheeler. And for another YA story where the romance shares the stage with something bigger, see Bite Me. For more, browse our lesbian books hub or every title in Book Reviews.

The Bottom Line

The Falling in Love Montage sets out to be a funny, self-aware sapphic rom-com, and what it actually is turns out to be better and harder: a sharp coming-of-age novel about grief, with a narrator readers fall for or fall out with, and a family story that lands. What holds it back for romance readers is the ending, which does not give the couple a future, and a heroine whose defences test some readers’ patience. It is worth it for readers who want sapphic YA with substance, and less so for anyone who picked it up for a guaranteed happy ending. Check The Falling in Love Montage on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, The Falling in Love Montage ranks as a standout voice-driven sapphic YA novel — witty and emotionally honest, held back as a romance by an open ending, and best approached as a coming-of-age story about grief rather than as a rom-com.