It felt like Saoirse did not know what she wanted (in a career, in life, and most definitely in a relationship), and Ruby got caught in the cross-fire of it all. Saoirse was much more boarded up than Ruby, in a way that wasn’t healthy. That aside, I honestly didn’t connect as well with Saoirse as I did with Ruby. The book has tear-jerking moments between Saoirse and her mother, but for the most part, it is light-hearted and was a feel-good story, especially for a queer girl. I really loved the fact that this wasn’t a coming out story, and this wasn’t a story of a relationship that had one of the girl’s family disapproving of their relationship. There was this feeling of natural-ness and calmness about the scene as it played out, you could imagine it happening and the two joking with each other. He poked fun, and she cringed, as a dad and his young adult daughter would. “A new ‘friend.’ Ruby, eh?,” he said, winking at Saoirse as she was about to leave for Ruby’s house. Her dad even had no problem saying lesbian and poking fun at his daughter about her likeness towards Ruby. Relationship drama and her mother having dementia aside, Saoirse is 100% proud of all parts of her identity, and so is her family. I don’t know if they are afraid of saying lesbian, but Saoirse certainly isn’t. Rarely do we ever, as TV and movie watchers, hear lesbian characters say the word “lesbian.” They typically refrain from the word, and rather use “gay” instead. So we end up reading a different kind of novel from the one we began, bringing deeper questions and satisfactions than readers might have foreseen.I find this endearing and it makes for a great first queer-related read. As they tick off the stages of the montage formula, real life overtakes them. This plan is not going to work, as any YA reader would know. Their analysis of the rom-com ‘formula’ (wittily handled by Smyth with its list of required elements, illustrated by specific movies), leads to a scheme to live out a ‘falling in love montage’ (no strings, of course). As the days go by and the quickfire dialogues reveal Saoirse’s passion for horror movies and Ruby’s for rom-coms, they agree on the latter as a kind of template for their summer together. The immediate magnetism between them is irresistible not least because neither is inclined to resist. Enter Ruby, an English girl, staying for the summer with the family of her rich-boy cousin, Oliver. Maybe a summer with someone involving serious kissing, parties, a fair amount of quality vodka, much laughter and no strings. She doesn’t want another long-term relationship, with its truth-telling and problem-sharing, especially with family issues like hers. What she wants this summer is – well, she’s not sure what. Saoirse’s had it with schoolwork, she’s been dumped by long-love Hannah, she’s not sure she wants Oxford. Even so, to Saoirse’s astonished disgust, he’s about to marry a business contact, Beth. They’ve divorced, but that doesn’t mean Dad’s love for her has died, as the novel reveals. Oxford has offered her a conditional place, to the embarrassing delight of her Dad, whose own life hasn’t run easily for the last few years as his wife’s early onset dementia tightened its grip. Saoirse’s just finished A-levels and left school in her seaside town to the south of Belfast. The storyline begins simply, if unconventionally. And, for a while, the novel becomes a painful account of the difficulties families face when dominated by illness and its impact on relationships. At another, an untypical rom-com since the lovers are late teen girls. At another, a knowing, satirical take on a quick-moving rom-com. For example, there’s the flickering interplay of smart conversation which YA readers expect – exceptionally alive in this novel or her own tenacious voice reflecting her struggles to understand : her feelings for Ruby a betrayal by a lifelong friend the loneliness of Oliver Quinn, a boy she has loathed for years but is now beginning to like and why her ex just walked away.Īt one level, this is a quick-moving rom-com. A condition which Saoirse knows can be hereditary. This confiding voice will not only entertain, but also allow Saoirse to provide a running commentary on the action: maybe a single kiss with Ruby, so complex that it requires a lingering page of description or – by contrast – the devastating sadness of visiting her psychotherapist mother in her care home, lost in the wilderness of dementia at 55. ‘That’s Seer-sha, by the way,’ murmurs narrator to reader, initiating a convention of such asides as early as page 2. The long summer ahead needs a plan, thinks Saoirse. The Falling in Love Montage Author: Ciara Smyth
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