Book Review: The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Sarah Addison Allen
Bantam, 2010
276 pages
hard cover
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I read Allen's Garden Spells some time back and really liked it. So then I tried her second novel The Sugar Queen and couldn't get into it at all. Never finished it. With such a 50-50 history, I wasn't sure what I'd think of The Girl Who Chased the Moon, but decided to give it a shot.

In a nutshell, the story is two-fold. The A plot line is about Emily, a teenager who comes to Mullaby, North Carolina, to live with the grandfather she's never met. Emily will learn about her deceased mother's childhood and will discover "strange and wondrous things." The B plot line is about Julia, who had been a contemporary of Emily's mother, and who had left Mullaby but was dragged back by her own father's passing. Julia has a two-year plan to take care of her father's restaurant until she can sell it for a small profit and leave town. But she starts to find herself ensnared by the past.

A quick read, and a good one. Allen is now at 66% in my book.

If you like the Southern hospitality genre (think: Miss Julia books by Ann B. Ross) or the semi-magical sorts of things Alice Hoffman is known to tackle, you'll probably like Allen's work. At least some of it.