Valley Of The Moon by Melanie Gideon – 416 pages
ARC courtesy of PenguinRandomHouse and Netgalley
Book Blurb:
Lux is a single mom struggling to make her way when she discovers an idyllic community in the Sonoma Valley. It seems like a place from another time until she realizes it actually is. Lux must keep one foot in her world, raising her son as well as she can with the odds stacked against her, but every day she is more strongly drawn in by the sweet simplicity of life in Greengage, and by the irresistible connection she feels with a man born decades before her. Soon she finds herself torn between her ties to the modern world, her adored son and the first place she has ever felt truly at home.
My Review: 4.5 stars
Valley Of The Moon took me on a magical ride through a love affair that travels through time. This book is a little Time Traveler’s Wife with the romance of Outlander and a dollop Sarah Allen Addison’s mysticism. That’s a literary trifecta!
At its heart, this is coming of age story for a woman caught between duty and passion. Can one have both? How do we divide our wants and wishes with responsibilities and stability? These are the questions Melanie Gideon pushes the reader to think about as we see the main protagonist struggle between past and present.
Obviously, you have to be able to suspend reality and believe in the possibility of either time travel or being stuck in time, as is the case in this book. The author creates a believable scenario and having all the mentions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe definitely ups the ante in plausibility.
The side storyline of Lux and her father’s brittle relationship was a good parallel to the main story. It was interesting how her father’s visits to the lake house brought him back in time to a never changing place that he took much comfort in.
I wasn’t sure how this book would end and was saddened by parts of it and equally gladdened by other parts. It actually worked well but I’d be curious to know if it was a planned ending or just came to her as she was writing. Speaking of her writing, Gideon has a knack in adding rich vocabulary into everyday dialogue. Bonus for us word nerds! I’d read Wife 22, an earlier book from this author and enjoyed that as well. I welcomed that this was such a different story from so much that’s on the shelves right now. Well done!
Quotes I liked:
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard
– “Only in San Francisco would an old woman be pushing pot instead of a cookie and a nice cup of tea on you.”
-“My mother once told me impossibility was a circle.”
-“There’s always some way they can contribute. If you tell a man he’s useless, he becomes useless.”
-“It’s a balancing act now, you understand? It’s the hardest thing about being a parent. Holding on and letting go simultaneously.”
-“Here was the wonderful thing about third-grade boys. In public they might want nothing to do with you, but in private they were snugglers.”
-“I let myself be supported. I let myself feel what it was like to not be alone.”
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