An excellent coming-of-age tale, but a bit more. There are two narrators, a mother and a daughter, telling their stories in different decades. The daughter's moves forward over the course of a week or so; the mother's goes backwards several years. It was beautifully written, with lush details about the music world. My only nit is that the daughter, Phoebe, seems a little too wise and mature for someone only 17. Thoroughly enjoyable, though. ( )

Girls on the Moon by Janet McNally was a Book of the Month Club selection for January. This book wasn't on my radar and I had not heard about it at all until it showed up there, but I was glad it did show up as it was a wonderfully told story about relationships.

Phoebe Ferris and her sister Luna are the children of Meg and Kieran Ferris, who were the lead singers/songwriters of a 90s band that made it big. It was big until Luna was born and Meg wanted out of the band. This also led to Meg and Kieran's divorce shortly after the band broke up.

Luna has come home to let her mother know she was dropping out of college to go on tour with her band in which she was living with the lead guitarist of the band. She moves from Buffalo to NYC, just a few train rides away from her now estranged father, to begin her new life.

Phoebe is left behind and sets out to visit with Luna. We will follow Phoebe around as she experiences her sister, reunites with her father, and learns the truth about who her parents were and how everyone broke apart.

We will also follow Meg as she meets Kieran, forms the band, starts to get famous, and finds out she is pregnant.

I have to write that I really enjoyed the back and forth narratives in the present with Phoebe and in the past with Meg. You get to see bits of Meg in the girls, even though Meg is left at home in Buffalo in Phoebe's story. You get to see how the sins of the past become manifest in the present with how Phoebe and Luna interact with one another, their parents, and their significant others. This is a book about relationships that even though they are far apart are connected deeply still.

The writing was fairly well done. There were a few sentences that were meant to be poetic, but came off a bit loopy, at least to me, but I enjoyed McNally's voice quite a lot. It is difficult to pull off a dual narrative, especially for a first novel. I am excited to see what she will bring to the writing world.

The book is marketed as a YA novel, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and I think most adults will get a lot out of it.

I gave this one 4 stars. ( )

This was ok. An additional Book of the Month choice. It was good as a YA read but not very exciting. ( )

I loved this so much. It's a book that follows Phoebe on a trip to visit her musician older sister in New York, and at the same time follows her parents' relationship backwards. There was a lot packed into this book about creativity and identity, and family relationships.

There was a lot of symbolism here. Phoebe carries around a copy of Catcher in the Rye, and she wanders around NYC trying to find meaning just like Holden Caulfield did. She also carries around a Rolling Stones magazine which had an article about her parents' band, and she and her sister both seem to be following in their footsteps in each of their own ways.

Really well done. I want to re-read this at a later date and see what I missed the first time around. ( )

This was a really refreshing read for me. It's not something mind-blowing or life changing but it had some really great character driven moments. Sometimes I look at the piles of books sitting in the corner of my room and wonder what I'll find. I got this book a while ago and kept putting it off in favor of other hyped up books. Eventually, enough was enough and I really wanted a break from the marketed hype so I closed my eyes and picked one of my own books.

Pheobe isn't talented like her sister Luna or even a musician like her parents. The performer gene was not passed down to her. Compared to their big and obvious presence Pheobe has a quiet one and just lets things happen to her. Her mother wants her to convince her sister to go back to college and her sister wants her to go support her at a performance before her band's tour starts. During the one week visit to her sister's place in Brooklyn, she's determined to start making things happen for herself.

In snippets of flashbacks, Meg Ferris lives her life as a rock star from the end to the beginning with the love of her life and her best friends at her side. She loves the music and at one point the stage but did she really ever love the lifestyle it came with?

I feel like I say this a lot but it's so rare for me to find a book with a likable main character. Pheobe is as flawed as a seventeen-year-old can get but she is self-aware. Her life doesn't change in a few days it just moves forward. Some of us wish that for just one day we could do something totally out of the ordinary for ourselves just to see what it's like and that's what she gets the opportunity to do. In Brooklyn, there's no best friend that's going to call dibs on the cute guy she's been talking to for months, her mom isn't going to low key dissuade her from mentioning her dad, and since she's feeling adventurous not even Luna is going to control her entire week.

I can't tell if Meg's flashbacks were her remembering her past while Pheobe was away but in the end, I didn't need to know. Pheobe also wants to know where everything went wrong in her mom's band and why her parents broke up and it's all answered in her mother's memories. Even when something looks perfect on paper at the end of the day people are human and flawed and that's what makes the world go round.

It was a week of self-discovery not necessarily change and I am here for that. This gets a high recommendation from me. ( )