Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - When the Moon Was Ours

Lush, tender, romantic, and tinged w/ magic, When the Moon Was Ours is a book that adeptly, gently forces the reader to slow down. The writing--w/ each word seemingly carefully and thoughtfully chosen--teters on the edge of purple prose, but McLemore somehow always strikes the balance and does it just right. The mystery and secrets and truths are interesting; the characters and their relationships w/ one another complex and full of depth; though I do find some the characters' decisions frustrating.

What I most appreciate about the book, however, definitely has to be the empathetic, sensitive portrayal and exploration of its transgender characters, particularly Samir. This is my first time reading such a book, and it is so revelatory, insightful, and heartrending. A tender and imaginative work that thoughtfully explores themes of identity, love, and truth.

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ang_mendoza's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I feel like I read the rough draft of this book. A lot of cheap storytelling devices were used to tell readers things that weren't clearly shown. There were a few symbols that could have been really cool but the author overused them and reintroduced stories/imagery as if they weren't already said. Also the extent of what magic was normalized and what wasn’t felt unclear and inconsistent. I mainly read for the trans rep and while I like Sam a lot as a character, a lot of his plotline felt heavily based in Miel's very surface level understanding of the trans experience. His struggle with gender felt unfairly posed against the other characters' more deliberate secrets and while it may ring true to some relationships, the framing of compromising your boundaries around dysphoria as a gesture of trust felt very misplaced. I recognize that the author is nonbinary but they also explicitly said that they were drawing on their husband's experience and not their own.

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solspringsreads's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Beautiful, lyrical, and so, so magical. It’s hard to express everything this book makes you feel into words because, more than a novel or concrete story, it feels like a sensory overload as we journey through the lives of the story’s protagonists. There were a lot of tense moments where I found myself dreading what might happen to the characters, especially at the hands of the often cruel and misunderstanding townspeople they lived with, but it’s ultimately a story about love, self-reflection, and self-acceptance. It’s an experience that stays with you long after you finish reading.

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littlebluenaiad's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

The prose was pretty. I’ll admit that. My problem with it, however, was that it distracted from whatever was happening at any given moment. The chapter titles make no sense. Sam and Miel are making out and I can’t even realize until a couple pages in when they start taking off their clothes.

Sam frees Miel from the glass coffin, and I don’t even know until they’ve run far from it. And when there were petals all over Sam’s face, I wasn’t sure who they were coming from.

And maybe that was the point. But I didn’t enjoy it. It felt like the text was so descriptive that it circled from show don’t tell back to show, because I can only realize what’s happening once the characters tell me. And it was also so, so repetitive. I can’t count how many times it was reiterated that the Bonner sisters had red hair, that they could have anything they wanted, that they wanted the magic of Miel’s roses no matter how many times she told them they wouldn’t do what they wanted from them.

Also, more distressingly, it was very uncomfortable whenever Miel would say that she thought of Sam as her dead brother. Every time, I wanted to shake her and scream, “Then WHY did you sleep with him on page 3? WHY can’t you stop of making out with him?” Needless to say it was. Very uncomfortable. And I wish that they were just friends, even without all the brother comparisons, because I felt like the fact that they both just thought of kissing whenever near one another distracted from their friendship.

Instead, the book ends with them about to have sex.

I almost wish that this were a children’s or middle grade book instead, because the concept would work so nicely for that.

One last problem I had with this book. They kept saying that people called Miel and Sam “Honey and Moon”, but they really only call her “Honey” as in “Miel”, not because she ate it off spoons and knives and was oh-so quirky, but because Miel is literally her name. And literally no one called Sam “Moon” in the entire book. Yet another example of telling instead of showing despite the rich, descriptive writing style. Thank you for reading, this concludes my rant.

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taleofabibliophile's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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