The Girl Who Chased the Moon

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this one in a single evening. It was an enjoyable read, but it didn't captivate me the way Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen did. I thought Allen tried a little too hard to have the characters' back-stories remain mysterious secrets, and that stifled character (and plot) development. I kept wanting them to just spill the beans so they could deal with the past and finally heal & move on with their lives.

The premise of the book is that 17-year-old Emily comes to Mullaby, NC, to live with her "gentle giant" of a grandfather after her mother's death. She knew her mother as a tireless social activist, but the town remembers Dulcie quite differently, only no one will tell Emily why. Meanwhile, the next door neighbor has a secret of her own, which relates to why she bakes cakes with the windows open, and why she can't wait to sell her (father's) restaurant and leave town again. And then there is the mayor's family with the teenage son, Win, who is drawn to Emily, despite his family's animosity toward her.

Win sneaking into Emily's room at night to watch her sleep was just a little too Twilight for me, though. (I loved Twilight, but a teenage boy who sneaks in "just" to watch a teenage girl sleep is creepy and not very believable.)

For Reader's Advisory: character and story doorways

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