5/5 stars
“Secrets, my mother told me once, are just stories turned inside out.”
My heart is so warm and full right now. I feel like I can’t comprehend anything because my mind is so suffused with the beauty of this book. It’s all I can think about.
Janet McNally is my new favorite author. This story was told so intimately and so beautifully that I just can’t even form coherent sentences.
I have never had a sister. I am the oldest in my family and only have a younger brother. But after reading Girls in the Moon, I want an older sister so bad. The relationship between Phoebe and Luna was so gorgeously and genuinely crafted.
what is girls in the moon about?
Phoebe’s parents were once part of a band together during the nineties, Shelter, but after her sister, Luna, and her were born, their parents broke up the band and their marriage. Her mother, Meg, doesn’t talk about the band, or anything before Phoebe was born. Phoebe hasn’t talked to her father at all for three years - he just stopped calling. And her older sister Luna had dropped out of college to tour with her band, following almost exactly in her mother’s footsteps. Phoebe is going to New York to visit her sister for a week, a week in which her mother wants her to convince Luna to go back to school. A week in which Phoebe will reconnect with her father and determine what her relationship with her sister and mother are, and who she wants to be.
Phoebe was a great main character. I really felt connected to her. She was unique and different from a lot of other heroines. Phoebe is passive and patient, and sits back and lets things happen to her. However, throughout the book she becomes more willful and does things for herself rather than for other people, which was an arc I thoroughly enjoyed. My favorite character arcs are when the character starts out kind of meek at the beginning but by the end of the book is really strong.
Luna was...interesting. I liked her, but she focused on herself and what she needed, not thinking about other people. But she too progressed as the book went on, and was very real and genuine.
Interspersed throughout the book are flashback chapters from Phoebe’s mother, Meg’s, perspective from the nineties that shows the relationship between her and Phoebe’s father, Kieran - the story that she never told Phoebe and Luna. Parallels are also drawn between Meg’s story and the story Luna is playing out.
Girls in the Moon is immensely character driven. At its core are the relationships between Phoebe, Luna, and Meg. Phoebe and Luna have very different relationships with their mother and that was really interesting to read. Surrounding them are Kieran, Luna’s boyfriend James, and the musician boy that Phoebe has secretly been texting lyrics to for months.
Phoebe doesn’t have the music gene like the rest of her family, but she writes lyrics, and these are scattered through the novel as she writes them and texts them to her friend.
This is a slow paced book - again, character driven. But the pacing was perfect for the nuanced and heartfelt story that McNally was telling. The writing was lush and lyrical, almost like a song itself. I found myself rereading lines to take in their beauty a second time.
I loved the way music was so intrinsically woven into the story, from the lyrics of Shelter’s songs and the lyrics Phoebe writes herself, to pop culture references of past bands and singers.
Girls in the Moon is about family and the relationships between mothers and daughters and sisters, about fame and the price of it, and about hope and finding yourself. Phoebe’s journey is at once intimate and universal. This is a story told with such astounding heart and artistry and realness that is impossible not to fall in love with it and want to read it again and again and again.
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