Astrophel R's Reviews > Kirby's Lessons for Falling [in Love]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free arc in exchange for an honest review.

Kirby’s Lessons for Falling (In Love) is a graphic novel following Kirby Tan, a climbing prodigy who suffers from a falling injury and ends up joining her school’s newspaper club as an extracurricular while she recovers. She becomes co-editor for the astrology column with Bex who is very loud and opinionated.

Honestly, I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if i read it when I was younger. This graphic novel is so quintessentially high school, and it does a really good job of showing how difficult it can be to reconcile being queer with having a religious family. I also liked how it explored the way that some queer people can also be very judgemental of queer people who stay religious, or keep their religious family around.

With that being said, I wasn’t invested in the main relationship. I just didn’t feel the chemistry between them. In part, I think this is because we got a quick montage of them catching feelings, then spent a lot more time on the pining after they already liked each other. There’s nothing wrong with establishing a relationship this way, but it’s not my preference.