This week’s review: THE MOON SISTERS by Therese Walsh
Jazz and Olivia Moon, two sisters as opposite as night and day, find their common denominator in the loss of their Mother. Beth Moon was a dreamer who fancied herself a writer. She was a woman who created a world where a fairy with a golden cloak would be trapped until an amazing day of rescue. For Beth, that day would never come. She always said that if she could only make it to the Cranberry Glades to see the “will-o’-the-wisps”, (atmospheric ghost lights seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes, resembling a flickering lamp said to recede if approached, drawing travelers from the safe paths), she’d find her ending to her book.
After the loss of their Mother, Jazz, the elder by four years and always the responsible sister, watched as her family began to fall apart. Her Father’s drinking made him even more distant. And then Olivia~~Olivia has a condition called synesthesia that causes her to see sounds and smell sights and taste words. Her world is so different from anything that Jazz can comprehend. To Olivia, her Mother smelled like the sun. So Olivia stares at the sun, nearly blinding herself. Left with only her periphery vision, Olivia insists on fulfilling her Mom’s desire to go to the cranberry glades and to also spread her ashes among the “ghost lights”. With or without Jazz, she’s going. If it’s without, she’s going to walk for days to get there if she has to!
Olivia won’t go alone. Jazz will be guilted in to taking her sister on this journey that will find the sisters falling farther apart than they had ever been before all the while bringing them much closer together as this is the first time that both sisters will see the world through the other’s eyes. On that journey of broken down cars, hitchhiking and train hopping, they meet “Hobbs”. Hobbs is a tattoo-covered train hopper with secrets of own. He is definitely not the kind of person that Jazz wants Olivia to be around, let alone to guide them to the bogs.
Olivia never did listen to Jazz. This time won’t be any different.
This book is brilliant. Author Therese Welsh brings to life characters that are so rich and engaging that you feel their every emotion. Her prose is lyrical. Her descriptions of what Olivia “sees” are masterful. Set in the mountains of West Virginia, the story seems to take on a fairy tale likeness of its own. There are some difficult subjects addressed in this book and they are handled with great care. I read somewhere that it took the author five years to craft this novel; a novel that will stay with me for a lifetime.
This is the second novel by Ms. Walsh. I haven’t read her first one called THE LAST WILL OF MOIRA LEAHY…yet. I love this author’s writing style. She could very easily become a new favorite of mine.
✰✰✰✰✰
An ecopy of this book was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley. The opinions above are expressly my own.
Maryellen is a 48-year-old avid reader, runner, and reviewer who lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband Mike and their two rowdy cats. The fact that she has a car named RoxyBlue and has a phone named Janet (Miss Jackson if you’re nasty) are only two of a million reasons why I love her. Couple that with her insight, intelligence, and her always half-full glass of optimism and it makes for an exceptional book reviewer. I am lucky to have the honor of Maryellen allowing me to post her reviews here every Monday.
Sherry Gorman 