The Book: The Girl Who Chased the Moon, by Sarah Addison Allen
The Story: After the death of her mother, Emily comes to the small town in North Carolina where her mother grew up to live with her Grandfather who happens to be a 8 foot tall giant. The house that he lives in has mysterious changing wall paper and the woods outside are filled with strange lights. Right away, she starts to get the feel that her mom left on bad terms, although the reasons have everyone’s lips sealed.
Another newcomer to the town, Julia, came into town after her father died to take over his barbecue restaurant. She starts baking cakes. Everyone is crazy about them. She is Emily’s mother’s age and Emily and Julia become fast friends. They help each other along as both of them deal with new relationships, friendships and parental issues.
What I Thought: I got this book on an ARC tour started by a book club friend, Cori. The book releases to the public on March 16th, so if it sounds good to you, get to your local bookstore on Tuesday to pick it up!
If you follow my blog at all, you’ll notice I’m not really a book snob, I read pretty much anything. I tend to avoid chic lit, but I think it’s a good diversion from time to time. That’s exactly what this book was. A good, quick diversion.
The only real issue that I had was totally unrealistic dialogue. The conversations between Emily and Win, who were supposed to be 17, were especially cringe-worthy. This really is something that I’m a stickler about, so maybe I was too hard on the author, but I found it just totally choppy and strange.
Other than that, I thought that this was an easy-to-read, heartwarming little story. Like in any chic lit, especially Southern chic lit, the characters and the setting were pretty over-the-top and overdone, and the plot was pretty easy to predict…but sometimes this kind of “light read” is called for.
Crystal had this book before me in the ARC tour, and here is her review.
Conclusion: Just a good, easy read. Not great, not awful. Worth the few hours it will take you to read it.