Falling Like Leaves by Misty Wilson is a fun YA book for fall! It’s a relatively-clean romance featuring an overachieving high school senior reconnecting with her first kiss from 9th grade. I would have loved this as a middle schooler.
Author: Misty Wilson
Genre: romance, rom-com, seasonal
Setting: Bramble Falls, Connecticut
Themes: autumn, holidays and seasonal, cozy reads, new kid at school, moving away, parental separation, small-town communities, fall festivals
Protagonist: female, HS senior, white
Recommended for: Grades 7-12
Starred Reviews: Kirkus
Ellis has a plan: spend her senior fall prepping her application for Columbia, get into their journalism program, and set the foundation for a respectable career. So when her parents announce that not only are they separating, but Ellis has to move with her mom from New York City to Bramble Falls, Connecticut, to live with her aunt and cousin, it couldn’t come at a worse time.
From past summers spent in Connecticut, Ellis knows Bramble Falls is idyllic and charming. But it also seems to be full of distractions. There’s local barista Cooper Barnett, Ellis’s one-time best friend and first kiss who now wants nothing to do with Ellis. And then there’s the Falling Leaves Festival, a local autumnal celebration run by Ellis’s aunt where people from all over come to see Bramble Falls’s beautiful foliage. The house is stuffed with decorations, and every conversation seems to center around the festival.
Dragged to every oh-so-charming event from apple picking to pumpkin carving, Ellis can’t stop bumping into Cooper…or falling for the quaint town and its quirky residents. As her return to Manhattan gets repeatedly delayed, Ellis finds herself caught between two very different places—and the futures they represent.
There aren’t many books for teens where fall celebrations play a big role, but autumn festivities are central to this story’s plot. Every chapter features a new fall activity, from apple-bobbing to a bonfire to the Pumpkin Prom. Fall-themed foods like Harvest Spice Latte and orange and black Oreo cookies also get a frequent mention. With so many teen romances set in around the winter holidays, I’m sure many teens will equally enjoy the fall theme.
I see that this is #1 in a planned series. Bring it on! I will definitely read the sequels.
I love that the male love interest is a baker. A recipe for Cooper’s Oreo Creamsicle cookie would have been a great addition!
I like the storyline about the parents’ separation. Ellis’s mother chose to be a stay-at-home mom, but she felt like she lost herself in the process. She loved painting, but over time, her painting became less important than Ellis’s father’s career. Ellis is going down a similar path by choosing her father’s career (corporate media) instead of following her own path (fashion design). The movie Practical Magic is mentioned multiple times in the book, and it makes a nice parallel to Ellie’s parents’ story.
The spice level is tame enough for most 7th graders. There is some kissing, and Ellis’s mom tells Ellis she is putting condoms in Ellis’s nightstand, just in case. In one scene, Cooper sneaks into Ellis’s room and sleeps overnight in the bed with Ellis, but it doesn’t go beyond kissing and snuggling.
I also have to mention the cover, which will easily catch the eye of teen romance readers. I know some readers don’t like the cartoonish covers for rom-coms (both teen and adult), but some readers definitely look for these covers. I know I personally like reading rom-coms, and the cartoonish covers tell me that the story is more cozy than dramatic.
This is pretty cute, and I think it will be popular with fans of YA romance. Some readers may find the female protagonist, Ellis, to be pretentious and self-absorbed, especially in the first half. While that may put-off some readers, Ellis is a 17-year old high school senior. Her being a snob and an overachiever is part of her story arc.
There is a certain amount of romantic game-playing, which will turn off some readers. It’s part of the cozy rom-com genre though – authors can’t be super-dramatic and still keep the story lighthearted. Rom-com authors have the difficult job of creating flawed characters that are still likeable and real to the reader. Cozy rom-com readers prefer to root for likeable characters that they can relate to. Most of us aren’t out here rooting for assholes to get together.
Interestingly, Halloween is completely skipped. This book is set in the USA, so I would expect an autumn book for teens to at least mention Halloween. But it doesn’t. I don’t have an opinion on that one way or the other, but I did notice it.
Main characters cue white, both in the text and on the front cover.
No characters are described in terms of race or ethnicity.
As with many romance books, there are lots of descriptions of blue or green eyes and no descriptions of brown eyes. I read a lot of rom-coms, both for teens and adults. Though we brown-eyed folks represent at least 50% of the world’s population (source), we are sadly underrepresented in the romance genre.
I do not remember any characters who were queer or trans.
