The Girl Who Chased the Moon

After losing her mother in a car accident, Boston teen Emily Benedict moves to North Carolina to live with her grandfather. Her arrival overlaps the short stay of pastry chef Julia Winterson, who is running her late father's barbecue restaurant until she can pay off his mortgage and return to Baltimore. Rebecca Lowman presents an understated narration of this sensitive story of loss and love, conveying the sadness and hope of both young women. Thankfully, Lowman rarely delves into the regional dialect of the rural village, offering instead a straight narration of the various characters' voices. While the audio initially sounds a bit too subdued, the listener soon comes to appreciate its subtlety and grace. R.L.L. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

November 30, 2009
Allen's latest (after The Sugar Queen
) takes the familiar setup of a young protagonist returning to the small town where her elusive mother was raised, and subverts it by sprinkling just enough magic into the narrative to keep things lively but short of saccharine. Seventeen-year-old Emily Benedict, intent on learning more about her mother, Dulcie, moves in with her grandfather, but is disappointed to find that her grandfather doesn't want to talk much about Dulcie. She soon discovers, though, that many still hold a grudge against Dulcie for the way she treated an old sweetheart before dumping him and disappearing. Luckily, Dulcie's high school adversary, Julia Winterson, back in town to pay down her deceased father's debt, takes a shine to Emily. She's working another quest as well: baking cakes every day with the hope that they'll somehow attract the daughter she gave up for adoption years ago. There are love interests, big family secrets, and magical happenings (color-changing wallpaper, mysterious lights) aplenty as Allen charts the spiraling inter-generational stories, bringing everything together in an unexpected way.