Bookanistas Review: MOONGLASS

mood: languid
pandora/ipod: "california dreamin'" by the mamas and the papas


Moonglass by Jessi Kirby

From Goodreads:

I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now, I've thought maybe my mother drowned in both.

Anna's life is upended when her father accepts a job transfer the summer before her junior year. It's bad enough that she has to leave her friends and her life behind, but her dad is moving them to the beach where her parents first met and fell in love - a place awash in memories that Anna would just as soon leave under the surface.

While life on the beach is pretty great, with ocean views and one adorable lifeguard in particular, there are also family secrets that were buried along the shore years ago. And the ebb and flow of the ocean's tide means that nothing- not the sea glass that she collects on the sand and not the truths behind Anna's mother's death- stays buried forever.

It's a simple story of love and loss, home and acceptance.

Okay. So when I finished the last page of MOONGLASS that's what popped into my head. "A simple story." But when I started off this review that way, it sounded... I don't know. Just not right. Like it wasn't complimentary somehow.

Of course, it is. To call this "a simple story" is, in my mind, one of the greatest compliments I could give. Because the simple stories of love, of understanding, of pain and of moving on - well, they're always the most powerful.

MOONGLASS is the story of Ana Ryan, a lifeguard's daughter, whose father moves her back to the very same beach where he and her mother met. What unfolds on the shores of Crystal Cove is part history, part atmosphere, part love story, part family secrets. And yet...simple.

First off, I was immediately entranced by Jessi's setting. Crystal Cove, south of Newport Beach in southern California, is a real place. I've been there. I've seen the cottages. I've met the locals. I've walked on the sand. It's a place outside of time and Jessi captured it perfectly - every scent, every sound, every odd and quirky character. She manages to conjure up the magic of the Cove to vividly that I wanted to hop in my car and drive down there, just to finish reading her novel in the place where it was set.

Matching her setting, there's an out-of-time-ness about her story, too. Something old and yet new. Ana is the new girl in town, struggling to find how she fits into this place where her parents and fallen in love. It's a place filled with people that know more about her mother than she does - her mother died when Ana was a child, under circumstances that no one wants to confront head on.

Add to this the beach setting, and one smoking hot (though horrible at Algebra) lifeguard, and you have an addicting mix of contemporary love story, and contemporary drama. I read the whole thing in a day and a half. I don't do that very often.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go work on my tan. ;)

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Check out the other Bookanista reviews this week!

Elana Johnson adores Hourglass
Beth Revis has cover love for Incarnate
Shana Silver swoons over Supernaturally
Rosemary Clement-Moore jumps for Jinx
Stasia Ward Kehoe praises Possession
Sarah Frances Hardy brags about The Grandma Book
Carrie Harris raves about Variant