If we all could shine as bright as the moon....

I have to admit it I am a MOON lover. Finding this book on the list for February, The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel by Sarah Addison Allen, I was so hoping I would love it and it would make me giddy.
I love the moon.... Love love La Luna.
If you know me you know it! To the MOON and BACK!!

THEN.... I picked it up and I just wasn't in love with the moon but I was more in LOVE with the delicious items coming from the kitchen of the local barbecue joint.

It wasn't so much about just one girl chasing the moon but HOW one girl led the path for other to face their true feeling, dreams and demons.

Ms. Allen introduced this small town and leads us down the main street into the front door of each character. I enjoyed the story and the magical touches brought into the story. And who isn't a sucker for True Love winning!!

Go ahead pick it up and try some of the delicious recipes like the Milky Way Cake recipe provided in the back of the book. If you try the recipe PLEASE PLEASE let me know what magic comes your way :)

Much Love and keep turning the pages,

Jennifer

The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A NovelBy Sarah Addison Allen

 Product Description (from Amazon)

Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also dreaming of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

Milky Way Cake
8 Milky Way candy bars (regular size)
2 sticks butter or margarine
2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs, well beaten
½ teaspoon baking soda
2½ cups flour
1¼ cups buttermilk
1 cup pecans, chopped

Melt candy bars in one stick of butter or margarine. Cream sugar and the other stick of butter or margarine together. Add eggs, baking soda, and flour alternately with buttermilk. Add melted candy mixture and pecans. Bake in 3 (9-inch) pans, greased, at 325 degrees for 30–40 minutes or until done. Cool for 5 minutes, remove from the pans, and cool on racks.

CHOCOLATE ICING
2½ cups sugar
1 cup evaporated milk
1 stick butter or margarine
1 6-ounce package chocolate chips
1 cup marshmallow creme

Mix over low heat. Combine sugar and milk. Cook until it reaches a soft ball stage. Add other ingredients. Stir until chocolate chips melt, then remove from heat. Beat until cool.

Fairies and Fear. Do you want to meet the Fairy King?

SCARED :: Couldn't look under the bed!

Yup that is what I told everyone I was when I was reading this book. I am the one to watch FRIENDS all night, give me a Joey line and I am laughing on the couch. Give me a scene from Hannibal or SCREAM or THE SHINING and you might not see my face as it is covered possibly with a blanket or hands covering my eyes peeking through the fingers and every light on in the house.

All closet doors shut and no looking under my bed at night.

So picking up this book and not putting it down I thought would be a challenge but it was not too difficult because Jennifer McMahon made me want more I had to figure out who was the Fairy King. What were all of these clues being dropped, wrong names, weird license plates, the friends from the past, how did they all tie together?? What happened to that town? Where is this girl?

Did I expect the ending? Kind of, but not the last page. Do I believe in Fairies? NAH but just maybe I do believe in that shadow.

Ms. McMahon is a talented writer. Pick up the book and let me know if you believe in Fairies.

Much love, 

Jennifer


Title: DON’T BREATHE A WORD
Author: Jennifer McMahon
Genre: Literature & Fiction, Mystery
Theme: Family, Fairies, Family Saga
ISBN-13: 978-0061689376


About the book (Amazon)

One summer night in Vermont, 12-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother Sam about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen.

Fifteen years later, Phoebe is in love with Sam , a practical, sensible man who doesn’t fear the dark and doesn’t have bad dreams—who, in fact, helps Phoebe ignore her own. But suddenly they are faced with a series of eerie, unexplained occurrences that challenge Sam’s hard-headed, realistic view of the world. As they question their reality, a terrible promise Sam made years ago is revealed and could destroy them all.

Reviews

“[A] strange and unsettling shocker ... With the tale’s outcome utterly unforeseeable even as it races along, “Don’t Breathe a Word” leaves you breathless.” (Wall Street Journal )

“Jennifer McMahon’s novels are like the perfect winter truffle: dark, rich, earthy, and an absolute, decadent pleasure. Don’t Breathe a Word is a haunting page-turner that kept me up, spine shivering and enthralled, way past my bedtime.” (Joshilyn Jackson, NYT bestselling author of Gods in Alabama and Backseat Saints )

“Jennifer McMahon never flinches and never fails to surprise as her stories twist down unexpected roads. Don’t Breathe a Word balances love and horror as McMahon weaves a young couple into a perverse fairyland where Rosemary’s Baby could be at home.” (Randy Susan Meyers, author of The Murderer's Daughters )

“Beautifully written and spooky, Don’t Breathe a Word wraps around you and pulls you into a dark world of fairies and family secrets.” (Chevy Stevens, New York Times bestselling author of Still Missing )


Biography :: Jennifer McMahon (Amazon)
I was born in 1968 and grew up in my grandmother's house in suburban Connecticut, where I was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic. I wrote my first short story in third grade. I graduated with a BA from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. A poem turned into a story, which turned into a novel, and I decided to take some time to think about whether I wanted to write poetry or fiction. After bouncing around the country, I wound up back in Vermont, living in a cabin with no electricity, running water, or phone with my partner, Drea, while we built our own house. Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness -- I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full time. In 2004, I gave birth to our daughter, Zella. In 2005, we left the woods (for now), and moved to Barre, Vermont -- producer of one-third of all the granite gravestones and mausoleums in the US.

Other Books reviewed on You Tube

February Titles

This month we have some amazing selections to keep the pages turning. McMahon takes on a journey in the woods of Vermont, Snyder captures us in the tales of a murder, while Hillendbrand reminds of our countries history and Allen takes to a southern town for some magic. Check out the selection below. I hope to hear your reviews. Let me know what you think. 

Much Love,

 Jennifer

Don't Breathe a Word: A Novel

by Jennifer McMahon
:: On a soft summer night in Vermont, twelve-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen.

Poison Study (Study #1)
by Maria V. Snyder
:: Locked in a coffin-like darkness, there is nothing to distract me from my memories of killing Reyad. He deserved to die--but according to the law, so do I. Here in Ixia, the punishment for murder is death. And now I wait for the hangman's noose.

Unbroken: A World War II Book of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand
:: On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
:: In her latest enchanting novel, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Addison Allen invites you to a quirky little Southern town with more magic than a full Carolina moon. Here two very different women discover how to find their place in the world—no matter how out of place they feel.