Falling Like Leaves

This young adult novel follows Ellis, a driven city girl whose meticulously planned senior year is derailed by her parents' separation and a forced move to rural Bramble Falls, Connecticut. Living with her aunt and cousin, Ellis must navigate the charming, yet distracting, small-town life, including reconnecting with Cooper, her childhood best friend and first kiss. As she's drawn into the town's annual Falling Leaves Festival and its quirky residents, Ellis finds herself torn between her New York City ambitions and the unexpected appeal of her new home and budding romance. The book explores themes of identity, change, family dynamics, and finding where you truly belong.

Gilmore Girls meets Jenny Han in this “delightfully autumnal small-town romance” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about a city girl stuck in a quaint small town who must confront her future and her old flame while the town prepares for an annual fall festival. 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 her. 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.