Reviews - The Girl Who Drank the Moon

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6.23k reviews for:

The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Kelly Barnhill

4.11 AVERAGE

angrim712's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

What a great story. The narrator did a lovely job giving everyone a unique voice and life. I loved how emotions were addressed and made you think.

It was great to see how the different storylines came together. I loved the ripple effects of the decisions and how it unraveled.

Another high recommendation to for any age, especially if they love fantasy. I think it would bring up interesting questions to discuss with kids.

hbeetleon's review against another edition

5.0

I love this book. This was my second time reading it and I absolutely adore the many and varied themes and truths that run through it. Particularly those around sorrow, grief, memory and love. The complexity of character and motivations are utterly honest to the human experience while being wrapped in delight, quirk and mystery.

I can't say enough about the honest attempt Barnhill makes to help readers (particularly young readers though I suspect all ages continue to struggle) through the complexity of grief and the everlasting effects of sorrow. Because it is true, there is no love without loss. Never an easy reality to learn but an honest and whole one and Barnhill makes that soul penetrating clear through this wonderful tale of a young girl coming of age and into herself.

cmucce01's review against another edition

5.0

Beautiful. Sweet. Magical. I am so touched by Xan and Luna, Glerk and Fyrian, Antain and Ethyne. This book read like a children’s Handmaid’s Tale but with much more hope and dragons and magic. Strong themes of adoption and found family also broke my heart and glued it back together again. Absolutely loved this book and couldn’t wait to read it out loud with my kiddos each night.

mshedgehog's review against another edition

5.0

Amazing fairy-tale like story about societal control, misconceptions, and love. I liked this book much better than "When Women Were Dragons." Highly recommend!

dawnmarie101881's review against another edition

2.5

mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

rastephe's review against another edition

4.0

This book had a fantastic start, but it got bogged down by overly-repetitive foreshadowing, bogged down by overly-repetitive murky past memories, bogged down by a glacial plot, bogged down by far too many overly-long lists with parallel structure like this one. And yet. (Oh let me never read those words again.) Given a good editor with a hungry scissors, this story could be great. Was this truly meant for children or YA? If so, it was too slow-moving and too weak on the dragon and swamp monster antics that could bring the story to life. Chop chop - cut it down to half the length and it could be a delight. Also, for children, some of the writing was both too complex (very antiquated language I had to explain) and too dark (my 9 year old started sobbing when a character crushed baby birds to drink the mother bird's sorrow.)

I'd give it a solid 3.5 stars, but I'll round up since the lagging middle section of the book picked up by the end. Ultimately, this book was an unexpected but excellent conversation starter about adoption and birth families. Both of my boys enjoyed it.