Luna’s fashion model mother has been dead a year having been hit by a cab after a dinner date with a friend. But when Luna finds her mother’s cell phone with seven messages, she begins to piece together what really happened by investigating the people who left messages with the help of her neighbor and competitive cello player, Oliver. A love interest develops only to be side-tracked by pressure from his domineering but absent father and, as Luna later finds out, by one of her former friends, Rachel One. Her movie director father gives her a camera for her birthday and the interesting premise for the story devolves into a fairytale with a twenty-something model Luna met helping her snag a show with a top gallery, a write up in the New York Times, and a possible book deal. Then she goes on a trip to Italy to stay with her uncle and his partner. Luna even begins to like her father’s new girlfriend. Even though Luna comes from a privileged background with famous parents, some readers will find this turn of events hard to swallow. The character development is slow and the prose is uneven but readers who like the glamor of New York may like it. ( )

I loved this book. I know many peple disliked the ending and I can get that b/c the part in New Yprk and the part in Europe are almost like two entirely different novels. However the final bit was my favorite part; the first part of the book was good in the way that many YA novels are good but the final part truly shone for me. It greatly reminded me of a Madeleine L'Engle novel in tone b/c Luna is like so many of L'Engle's main characters super adult and incredibly young at the same time. Furthermore the adults could come from the pages of a L'Engle novel with the way they very much have their own lives that are foreign and a bit scary to the younger protagonist. So many YA novels just have the adults as evil or as foils to their younger conterparts w/out true lives or stories of their own. This book is a must read in my opinion. ( )

If you pick up this book thinking it's going to be a mystery, or at the very least, have mysterious elements, you will be sadly mistaken and probably bored. Moon/Luna/Malia is the daughter of a famous film-maker and a famous model who died a year earlier. She has a little brother named Tile. Really. Named after a hardware store staple. Moon/Luna/Malia likes to take pictures and knows a lot of famous people. And now she wants to unravel the mystery around her mother's death. Except if you even have the slightest inkling that there is a mystery around her mother's death, you will be very disappointed. The book is like a combination of one of the more boring Newbery winners and a Gossip Girl novel, without the literary quality of the former or the page-turning qualities of the latter. The characters are pretty likable and the descriptions of smells are particularly good. As my rating says, it was okay. I can't blame the author for misleading flap copy. His main quirk that I object to is the adult hindsight that shines through occasionally. Several times, he reminded me of those times my best friend's mom would randomly pop in and give us jewels of wisdom while we were hanging out together. That's great (and I obviously still remember them), but not so convincing when they're supposed to come out of the mouth of a 15-year-old.

Some parts of the book will be dated really quickly because of the specific songs, bands, and actors name-dropped in the book.

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Earlier: I'm only halfway through but I really don't like this book. The premise is intriguing, but so far (I'm on message 4) the messages have been disappointing. I'm going to stick it out until the end, but so far I would not recommend this book. I picked it up on an impulse at B&N yesterday. ( )

I liked the idea behind this book. A year after her (model) mum’s death, main character Luna finds her mum’s phone, fully charged, and with seven voice mail messages on it. She then discovers something about her mother’s life that could change hers forever. I really really liked it, but in the end it was a tiny bit disappointing.

The Characters – Quite a few, there’s Luna (whose real name is Malia), her little brother Tile (because when their mum was pregnant with him, she spend a lot of time on the cool Spanish tiles in the bathroom for some reason, idk), and their father who’s a famous film director. And of course, being a famous film director means that you meet a lot of famous people, and that’s what bothered me a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I like it when there are ‘famous’ people in books, but I am not a fan of REAL famous people in books. For example, Luna talks about Drew Barrymore and Orlando Bloom in this book, about how she talked to them, about how Orlando stayed at their place while filming something in New York, and I just didn’t like that. I would rather have two fake-famous people, two made-up famous people having their place than to read about real famous people in fiction books. I might be the only person, but it annoyed me a bit.

Anyway, then there’s the two Rachels who are absolute bitches, Janine who’s Luna’s best friend, and Oliver, Luna’s crush. And a lot of other people; a model, Cole (and you’ll find out who he is when you read the book), Richard (Luna’s uncle), some Italian people, and so forth.

The Story – Like I said, I liked the idea behind the story, but I had hoped it would be a bit more exciting. I predicted the mysterious thing that her mother did from the start, and I was actually disappointed when I found out I was right. I did like the things that happened around that plot, and the fact that Luna had her own photography exhibition, because I LOVE photography (and my name is also not really Luna, yay!). I liked and both disliked the fact that she went to Paris somewhere near the end of the story, because who in their right mind lets a fifteen year old on a train from Italy to Paris? Anyway, everything turned out fine, but still, I don’t get it.

The Romance – Like I said, Luna has a crush on Oliver, the boy who lives across the street. He plays the cello, and he’s absolutely dreamy (apparently). I didn’t really ‘feel’ anything for them during the majority of the story, until the end when the Paris thing happened, that’s when I got a bit happy, but no, I don’t ship it.

The Action – Not really any action, but there was a lot of photography stuff going on, with a very old camera which got me REALLY excited, oh my gods. I WANT MY OWN DARKROOM OK.

The Writing – I liked the writing, it was simple, and I read through it as if it were a Dutch children’s book, haha! I might read some more books by Stewart Lewis (I keep on having the urge to write Stewart Little though, and I haven’t seen that movie for a looooooooooong time).

In the end, I gave You Have Seven Messages three stars, because even though I liked it, I found the lack of surprise and the lack of action a bit of a pity. Oh well, the photography things made me feel a lot better about it, I feel like making a lot of pictures again! (I have decided to judge the books I read on five different aspects, because that makes reviewing a lot easier for me. I found my reviews a bit of a mess actually, so I thought of a better way of doing it). ( )

This book started well, but around the halfway mark I lost interest in it. I didn't connect with Luna and I found the plot slow. Oliver, Luna's love interest was rather two dimensional and the other characters didn't appeal. The only character I liked was Tile, Luna's younger brother. He was a sweetie. As for the names . . . Luna? Tile? Hmm. ( )