Serious Moonlight by Jenn Bennett

 

My Rating ~ Four and a half stars

RELEASE DATE:  16 April 2019

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Format: E-ARC

Pages: 432

Source:  Received from Simon & Schuster via Netgalley

 

Blurb

After an awkward first encounter, Birdie and Daniel are forced to work together in a Seattle hotel where a famous author leads a mysterious and secluded life in this romantic contemporary novel from the author of Alex, Approximately.

Mystery-book aficionado Birdie Lindberg has an overactive imagination. Raised in isolation and homeschooled by strict grandparents, she’s cultivated a whimsical fantasy life in which she plays the heroic detective and every stranger is a suspect. But her solitary world expands when she takes a job the summer before college, working the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel.

In her new job, Birdie hopes to blossom from introverted dreamer to brave pioneer, and gregarious Daniel Aoki volunteers to be her guide. The hotel’s charismatic young van driver shares the same nocturnal shift and patronizes the waterfront Moonlight Diner where she waits for the early morning ferry after work. Daniel also shares her appetite for intrigue, and he’s stumbled upon a real-life mystery: a famous reclusive writer—never before seen in public—might be secretly meeting someone at the hotel.

To uncover the writer’s puzzling identity, Birdie must come out of her shell…discovering that most confounding mystery of all may be her growing feelings for the elusive riddle that is Daniel.

 

 

Review

Thankyou to Simon and Schuster for providing me with a copy of Serious Moonlight, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

After loving Jenn Bennett’s Starry Eyes, I just knew I needed to get my hands on Serious Moonlight!

For the first part of this book I was….underwhelmed.  I wanted to shake Birdie a bit – I found her annoying and frustrating and the ‘banter’ was just not clicking for me.  But by the time I was halfway through I couldn’t put the book down, it completely redeemed itself.  I was laughing out-loud and cringing through some of the awkward moments.  I loved the flawed characters and watching them grow throughout the story.  the mystery aspect was so fun and really well done.  It was there as the backbone to the story, but the real story was the sweet and awkward relationship development between Birdie and Daniel.

I thought the inclusion of the social, physical and emotional issues that were portrayed in the book were important and handled in a very realistic way.  I won’t go into what they all were, because they contain spoilers, but it just added such an interesting and raw aspect to the story.

Jenn Bennett is definitely one of my favourite contemporary authors.  Her books are witty and just so much fun.  Her characters are the type of disasters that just make them seem so real and relatable that I’m always left wishing I was going to get to read another story with them in it!

 

 

 

Photo via my Instagram account @Bookbookowl

 

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