Hey guys! About a year ago, when The Moonlight Dreamers by Siobhan Curham came out, I was lucky enough to win a copy from the author on Twitter. And then, in the ways that TBRs seem to mutate and grow and overwhelm us overnight (it’s some kind of magical force, I’m sure), it sat on my shelf for the next year. And then when the lovely people at Walker sent me the sequel, Tell it to the Moon, (thank you!!) I binge read both in a single day.
Now, although this post doesn’t include spoilers for Tell it to the Moon, I really recommend you stop reading if you haven’t read The Moonlight Dreamers yet! Just go and read it. Now. It’s seriously good.
Check out the blurb:
What happens when a dream is impossible to achieve-or even figure out?
Amber, Maali, Rose and Sky are the Moonlight Dreamers, an unlikely group of friends who give one another the courage to be themselves and pursue their dreams.
As they discover, life may not always turn out as planned, but sometimes the unexpected can be even better.
This book says that it’s A celebration of friendship and finding your place in the world, and I can’t think of a more apt description. It’s heartwarming and life affirming and inspiring all at once, all packaged up in an adorable contemporary YA read that is cute and sweet and funny. I was HOOKED.
Told between the alternating four POVs of the main characters: Amber, Maali, Rose and Sky, this book picks up shortly after the events of The Moonlight Dreamers and effortlessly continues the story of the four teenagers coming together to face fresh problems, pursue new and old dreams alike, and find that with their friendship, they can truly be themselves.
In Tell it to the Moon, Amber has tried and failed to find her surrogate mother, leaving her feeling a bit directionless and unsure of where she wants to go and what she wants to do in life. Maali has a crisis at home when her dad becomes seriously ill, testing her faith and spiritual beliefs. After being home-schooled all her life, Sky struggles to adapt to going to school for the first time, challenging her and making her miserable, and after Rose comes out, taking a lot of bravery, she decides to continue pushing herself and chase her newly discovered dream of becoming a patissier.
One thing I seriously love about this series (I think it’s a series? All I know is that I NEED more books!) is that each of the four teenagers are very different, a fact that is celebrated, along with the celebration of close female friendships. Yes, there are some romantic sub-plots for a couple of the characters, but that isn’t the main focus in these books. I adored reading the conversations between all of the characters and seeing how they each interact with each other in different situations.
Amber is delightfully old-fashioned and quirky, she made me want to read Oscar Wilde all over again with her fangirling over him! Her identity struggles and blogger’s block made her confidence waver in this book, which had me rooting for her the whole way through! She might just be my favourite. Maali’s love of photography and worry over her family influenced a lot of her storyline in this book, and I adored Rose’s pursuing of her baking dreams. Books with baking in are just better. Fact. I felt so sorry for Sky with struggling to fit in at a school for the first time, not being heard and having regimented learning that was exam orientated rather than how she’d previously studied with her dad was a really relevant issue to include for a lot of teens, and I thought it was great that Siobhan Curham included this. In fact, although these are adorable contemporary reads, they thoughtfully and sensitively deal with a wide range of issues, which I thought was really good.
Overall, if you liked The Moonlight Dreamers, then this is the book for you! Tell it to the Moon was every bit as brilliant and beautiful as the first book, and I hope Siobhan Curham never stops writing these books! 4/5 stars from me.
Has anyone else read these books? What did you think of them? Who’s your favourite character? What other cute contemporaries have you enjoyed lately?
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