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Title: The Last of the Moon Girls by Barbara Davis
Details: Copyright 2020, Lake Union Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "She turned her back on her family's legacy. Now she must find a way to save it.
Lizzy Moon never wanted Moon Girl Farm. Eight years ago, she left the land that nine generations of gifted healers had tended, determined to distance herself from the whispers about her family’s strange legacy. But when her beloved grandmother Althea dies, Lizzy must return and face the tragedy still hanging over the farm’s withered lavender fields: the unsolved murders of two young girls, and the cruel accusations that followed Althea to her grave.
Lizzy wants nothing more than to sell the farm and return to her life in New York, until she discovers a journal Althea left for her— a Book of Remembrances meant to help Lizzy embrace her own special gifts. When she reconnects with Andrew Greyson, one of the few in town who believed in Althea’s innocence, she resolves to clear her grandmother’s name.
But to do so, she’ll have to decide if she can accept her legacy and whether to follow in the footsteps of all the Moon women who came before her."
Why I Wanted to Read It: The last few years have been big for Witch books, of Witches of all kinds.
How I Liked It: WARNING FOR MILD SPOILERS!
Let's talk about tropes for a minute. When you think of tropes, you generally think of something negative, an indication of lazy writing, perhaps. But tropes are just that, tropes, neither necessarily good nor bad. When people complain about tropes, what they usually are complaining about are overused tropes or clichés. You might see where this is going, but then again, you might not.
But first! Meet Elzibeth (no, that is not a typo) "Lizzy" Moon, a fragrance executive in New York City, fresh off an affair with her boss who is trying to make something more of it than it was, when she gets the news that the grandmother who raised her, Althea Moon, has died after losing a battle with cancer unknown to Lizzy. Lizzy must return to her grandmother's family farm and settle affairs. She left eight years earlier, when two murdered teenage girls ended up in her family's pond and her grandmother who sold a spell potion in her shop to one of them is the main suspect. Lizzy's ne'er-do-well absentee biological mother Rhanna, a "free-spirited" hippie, does the family no favors by her public and embarrassing scenes in town. Fleeing her family history (the Moon girl legacy is passed from mother to daughter and apparently the family has no sons nor siblings, which is pretty convenient) on all counts, and burying her own psychic skills (it's no coincidence she works in fragrance: she detects scents on people that indicate various factors like grief or loss), she started a new life in New York and stayed there.
So Lizzy returns to her grandmother's home and farm to find a Creole woman living there, Evangeline "Evvie" Broussard, apparently a dear friend of her grandmother's that shared many aspects of her life (if you're hoping as I was that they were wives, at least spiritually, the author gives Evvie a somewhat tacked-on romance with a man in town and takes pains to mention her and Althea's "sisterhood") and tended many of her affairs in death, including the letter notifying Lizzy. After first bristling at each other, Evvie and Lizzy become close (turns out Evvie has powers of her own; she works with bees that treat her like a Disney princess) and Lizzy starts investigating what needs doing, intending to sell the farm and her family's legacy. But she finds a book left to her by her grandmother and ends up deciding to investigate the unsolved murders that drove her away years earlier and stained her grandmother's (and by extension, their family's) name. Word gets around that Lizzy is asking questions and folks aren't happy and start a campaign of violent harassment.
Along the way, Lizzy sort-of reconnects (more like connects for the first time) with a boy that was infatuated with her in high school despite his being popular (and her being one of those weird Moon women), and is still infatuated with her (and conveniently single), Andrew Greyson. With Lizzy's grandmother dead, folks in town start asking Lizzy for her wares (like a soap that helps lull a baby to sleep) and Lizzy is reluctant at first, but decides to do what she can for people kind to her.
And then Lizzy's biological mother Rhanna turns up, reformed (not that Lizzy buys it). She and Lizzy and Evvie live together and start making the goods the Moons were known for, while Lizzy investigates murder and plays keep-away with Andrew and her feelings. Lizzy learns that her grandmother was trying to tell her about Rhanna's powers, the fact she sees how people will die and saw how the two girls found dead in their pond would meet their fate; such an ability drove her to the substance abuse that severely damaged her relationship with Lizzy.
But a dangerous home invasion (the attacks on the Moons keep escalating) drives Lizzy to Andrew and forces her to solve the mystery of the murdered girls and face the real killer/s and I won't give their names, but it's a pretty unsatisfying ending.
That mystery solved, Lizzy decides to stick around as does Rhanna and Evvie, Lizzy and Andrew marry and have a baby (conveniently a girl), and the book ends with Lizzy writing to her daughter, the newest Moon girl, presumably.
Now before we get into all that, what's the deal with a woman returning to her home she fled years earlier and solving a mystery, usually with some sort of peril and family secrets? Well, in this Challenge, in the past three years alone, we've seen it a lot. This book is already the third I've seen this year alone and it's only June. Ready? Feel free to play Yakety Sax for full effect.
They Drown Our Daughters
The Witch of Belladonna Bay
Sharp Objects
Midnight at the Blackbird Café
The Fifth Petal
Now does that mean those books weren't good? While some of them weren't, no, really, all it means is that they share that trope in common. Sharp Objects, for instance, was excellent.
So it's not the trope that's the problem, it's when it becomes overused. So where does this book fall? We-ellll....
Over the years, the city had polished her rough edges, leaving no sign of the girl who'd run barefoot through her grandmother's fields, gathering herbs until her fingers were stained, her nails gritty with New England soil. But then, that was why she'd come to New York; to rid herself of that girl. To live like other people. A plain, round peg in a plain, round hole. No surprises. No suspicions. No secret book with her name on it. Just...normal. And it had worked, mostly. She'd come a long way since leaving Salem Creek. But was there such a thing as too long? Was it possible to walk away so completely that you lost yourself in the process? (pg 13)
Lizzy met his gaze, breath held as she plumbed the depths of those warm amber eyes. Familiar eyes, she realized. The kind a less wary woman could get lost in. (pg 228)
Suddenly it was hard to breathe, hard to pull her gaze from his. "I mean it, Andrew. This isn't me being coy. What I said before about not letting myself want what other people have-- it's real. I'm not like most women. I'm not chasing happily-ever-after. I'm... different." (pg 262)
Before Lizzy could bend down to retrieve them, Helen beat her to the punch. She met Lizzy's gaze squarely as she dropped the peaches back into her bag, her brown eyes flat and unblinking. elen [sic] has beat her to the pinch. [sic] Helen [sic] "You should be more careful, Ms. Moon. I'd feel awful if you ended up getting hurt." (pg 314)
(Those typos are pretty impressive.)
So yeah, this book has a lot of overused tropes. But I don't really mind overused tropes so long as the book is good. And while the mystery of this book doesn't have the pay off it should, you can see the ending a mile away (think a Hallmark Christmas movie), and the romance had me more rolling my eyes then rooting for the couple, I still found this a better and more cohesive book than the last book I read of this trope, They Drown Our Daughters. But still, it veers into treacle and clichés far too often and the rest of the book just isn't good enough to support that veering.
There's an argument about formula films (like Hallmark Christmas movies, for instance) that they're popular because people like the formula. And I agree. But a formula film (or a formula book) has to do more than walk from one overused trope to the next. "Family secrets" to "big city girl returning to the small town" to "long-lost love interest" to "long-lost mother" to "re-connection" to "happily-ever-after" isn't necessarily bad if there's more to it. And unfortunately this book just doesn't exceed the formula enough for you to not care that you can wearily predict what's going to happen. I've made the argument that a book doesn't need to be good to be good and I stand by it. And a book full of tropes (or even clichés) is not necessarily a bad thing, unless of course it loses its entertainment value. It's a shame this book never overcomes its overused tropes; if it did, it'd be truly something.
Notable: So which Witch are the "Witches"? It's generally meant to be magical realism/slight fantasy, I think, but the author goes the familiar route of making it look a lot like the real thing:
And it would continue to be their legacy, as long as there was one person alive who remembered it.
Harm none. (pg 44)
"If you've been given a gift, there's a reason. The magick goes where it's best used." (pg 98)
Halloween-- Samhain-- had been a particular favorite for the local children [for pranks]. Althea had always taken it in stride, evening managing to chuckle at some of the more imaginative pranks. She'd found the toilet paper pentagram in the front yard particularly amusing. (pg 119)
But she missed the creative part of the process, the delicious serendipity that had first drawn her to making perfume-- the magick of scent. (pg 210)
Lizzy watched from the doorway as the squad car backed down the drive. Thank the goddess that was over. (pg 225)
She read through the lines several times, committing them to memory. When she was sure she had them, she closed her eyes, letting her hands hover above the soap, the way Althea had done the way she resurrected the blackened basil plants, and spoke the words.
"Soap so gentle, pure and mild. (pg 235)
Bring sweet sleep to the crying child.
Let darkest night pass by with ease.
Thank you, Spirit. So mote it be."
I still have and will probably always have mixed feelings about authors doing this.
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There's some racial angles that go from needing a sensitivity reader to "Really?! In 2020?"
They ate in silence at the kitchen table-- a rice dish of some sort, made with tomatoes and beans, and plenty of spice. It was delicious and exotic, full of ethnic flavors Lizzy couldn't place. (pg 25)
"Exotic" and "ethnic" made me twitch.
"Folks around here believe in buying local, even if it is from a woman with a funny accent and skin the color of old wood." She shot Lizzy a wink as she hefted the box up into her arms. (pg 152)
This from the Creole character Evvie. Yeah, it's a Black character saying it, but it's a Black character written by a white author.
The way she smelled, for instance, like bonfires and tea leaves, rose petals and rain. The combination was as unfamiliar as it was unsettling-- a blur of pagan and gypsy, layered with the loamy scent of wet earth-- and sharply at odds with the woman she remembered. (pg 187)
Yes, there was history, and, no, he didn't know all of it, but surely thumbing three thousand miles across the country-- even for a self-professed gypsy-- counted for something. (pg 196)
People, please. Please. Don't use this word. G*psy is a slur for Romani people. Say "free-spirit", say "hippie" since that's what you actually mean.
Evvie lowered her smudge stick and nodded mutely. (pg 361)
Unless you belong to one of the Indigenous tribes that use the practice of smudging, don't say smudging (say "smoke-cleansing") and you don't have a smudge stick, you have a smoke-cleansing stick.
A candid shot of Rhanna at work on one of her sketches, her hair fastened geisha style with a pair of paintbrushes. (pg 379)
...No.
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The book is ostensibly set in the present (as in 2020, or at least 2019, let's be honest), and yet many factors would've benefited from the author picking a different year. Lizzy's grandmother Althea's romance with Lizzy's grandfather reads far more World War II than Vietnam. Lizzy's flighty, hippie mother loves the music and fashion and culture of a time that she personally wouldn't remember as it was on the wane when she was born. While you're allowed to have interests beyond your own generation obviously, this feels so locked in (Rhanna groves to Janis Joplin and Creedence Clearwater Revival but never to Phish or Echo and the Bunnymen), why not just set the book earlier?
But no, it's 2020:
Lizzy squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the moment WKSN news had broken into the season finale of The Good Wife to report that two local girls had gone missing, and that police suspected foul play. (pg 45)
That pegs "eight years earlier" being between 2010 and 2016, and Lizzy peruses a 2012 yearbook in her research of the girls.
And then there's this exchange.
"Your boyfriend?"
"No, he's...We..." She looked away, embarrassed by her fumbling. "He's my boss."
"Is that your final answer?" (pg 139)
Run, Lizzy! He's trapped in the year 2000 and can't get out!
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"My mother was the sentimental type. She used to say we all need to go home from time to time, to remind us where we came from. I think she was half-right. We do need to come home from time to time, but only to remind us why we left in the first place, so we can get clear on what we do want. Because in the long run, that's all that matters-- what we want from life and what we're willing to do to get it. Maybe that's what you need, Lizzy, to go spend some time with your memories. Things might look different when you do." (pg 9)
This is becoming one of my linguistic pet peeves, although I'm not blaming this particular author. Where you live is your home. Where you grew up or your parents' home is exactly that. I realize this is shorthand. I realize you know what people mean when they say that. But let's perhaps shift away from saying that.
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Lizzy felt her cheeks go pink. "You imagined a romantic encounter with me?"
"I was eighteen years old. And male. Of course I imagined it. I still imagine it." (pg 266)
Teenage boys are the primary imaginers of romantic encounters?
"She'll be fine with us," Rhanna assured her, smiling that smile women reserve for children under three. "Kayla, is it? What a pretty name." (pg 344)
Uhhhh, doesn't everyone smile at toddlers? Isn't that kind of a thing we as a species do? I have not noticed a difference between the way women smile and other genders.
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"My boss," she explained sheepishly.
"Luc?"
He'd pronounced the name with a swishy French accent. (pg 260)
"Swishy"? Not "snooty" or "terrible" or "exaggerated"? Hmmm.
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Lizzy blinked back a fresh sting of tears, dismayed to find Luc Chenier hovering in her office doorway. He'd just had a haircut, and looked even more devastating than usual in his ubertailored black Brioni. He knew it too, which used to annoy her when they were seeing each other, but didn't anymore. (pg 5)
Brioni?! Does Jim Cramer know about this?!
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He was used to getting his way. And why wouldn't he be? The man positively oozed charm. It didn't hurt that he looked like Johnny Depp without the eyeliner, or that he'd retained a hint of his mother's French accent. But those things had quickly lost their appeal. (pg 6)
That line hits sadly a whole lot differently than had the author wrote it in, say, 2009, maybe. Ooof.
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I've criticized a lot in this book for being trite and overused, but there were some dazzling lines.
The school office was smaller than Lizzy remembered, a warren of closed doors, scarred desks, and hideous chairs stamped out of orange plastic. The smells were the same, though: a combination of coffee, scotch tape, and printer ink perpetually suspended in the fuggy air. (pg 162)
That is such a staggeringly good description of what a school office smells like I'm instantly transported.
We each have many destinies to fulfill. Being your grandmother was one of mine, and I would be remiss to stop teaching you now, simply because my feet no longer leave prints in the earth. (pg 174)
Excellent.
We need no church, no graven image, no rules scratched on stone tablets on ancient scrolls. No sacred ritual or initiation is required to become what we already are-- bits of god and stardust held together by divine breath and pure love. (pg 382)
Imagine if the whole book lived up to this potential.
Final Grade: C-
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