Author: Rebecca Maizel
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Source: HarperTeen via Edelweiss
Goodreads
A luminous young adult novel that evokes Judy Blume’s Forever for a new generation.Review by Nara
Ever since Sarah was born, she’s lived in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Scarlett. But this summer on Cape Cod, she’s determined to finally grow up. Then she meets gorgeous college boy Andrew. He sees her as the girl she wants to be. A girl who’s older than she is. A girl like Scarlett.
Before she knows what’s happened, one little lie has transformed into something real. And by the end of August, she might have to choose between falling in love, and finding herself.
Fans of Jenny Han and Stephanie Perkins are destined to fall for this story about how life and love are impossible to predict.
Well, this book turned out to be a lot more meaningful than I thought it'd be. Honestly, from the blurb and the cover, Between Us and the Moon seems like it'd be a fluffy summery romance. Which I guess it is, on face value. But it also covers quite the coming of age story, with focus on "fitting in" and being smart and how to balance all your different interests.
I don't really like it when the plot of a contemporary novel (or actually any genre for that matter) revolves around the protagonist not revealing some sort of secret to the love interest. More specifically, when the protagonist is outright lying to the love interest and refuses to tell him/her the truth, with all the excuses being something to do with "the time not being right". There are two reasons I dislike this. First, because I just don't really like lying in books in general. The second is because it makes you so freaking tense the entire time because you're just waiting for the cat to get out of the bag. Seriously, every time Sarah started to consider telling Andrew the truth about her age, I was sitting there thinking FREAKING TELL HIM.
While I didn't like how their whole relationship was built on a lie, I did like the romance overall. Both characters are inherently likeable (although Sarah makes quite a few idiotic choices throughout the book), and the romance between them is definitely a shippable one. While there is obviously an age difference (16 and 19), I never felt like this was a big issue. I mean, to be honest, in terms of the characterisation, they both felt like older teens, which is maybe why the age thing didn't seem like a huge issue (apart from the fact that she lied to him). I don't know.
I think the ending was a little too open for my liking. I'm usually okay with an open ending in a contemporary considering it's difficult to have a clear cut "now the mission is over" sort of thing, but there were just a few too many issues left loose in this book for me to be okay with how open the ending was. This wasn't a huge issue, seeing as though the rest of the book was very good, but I still would've liked a bit more closure about certain things that happened towards the end of the novel.
Between Us and the Moon was a lot better than I expected it would be. While it had a relatively simplistic plot, the characters and romance were very well developed. It's a summery read that I'd certainly recommend you give a go.
Really liked it
RatingsOverall: 8/10
Plot: 4/5
Romance: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Cover: 3/5
