Review: Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge

Once in a Blue Moon
by Eileen Goudge
Vanguard Press (October 2009) ~ 336 pages
Fiction / Family and Friendship

Edition Reviewed: Hardback - Review copy received courtesy of the publisher and One2One Network, many thanks to the author, the publisher and the people at One2One Network for sending me a copy to review!
Perfect for : Personal Use, Book Club (Reading Guide available here)

My Thoughts: If you are in the mood for a nice easy read about friends and family relationships, you should take a closer look at Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge. This book will touch your heart. It will make you cry, and it will make you smile.

To me, the book was really centered around the ups and downs that life throws you, and the importance of the relationships around us that help us get through touch challenges.

As young girls, Lindsay and Kerrie Ann had a tough life, with a mother who is ultimately arrested for selling drugs. The sisters are separated and sent to different foster home. One ends up with a wonderful family, while the other is moved from family to family, without life giving her any breaks.

Thirty years later, Kerrie Ann shows up in Lindsay's life hoping she can help her get her daughter Bella back from the state. Lindsay has struggles of a different type, over property rights. Even after thirty years, the sisters pull together to help each other, while re-establishing their relationship.

Characters: Throwing in some challenges allows readers to see the characters as human beings, and gives us the ability to relate in some form to what they are going through. There are some wonderful relationships that are developed throughout this book.
Story-Line: It was really easy to get caught up in the lives of the characters I was reading about - the story pulls you along and retains your attention.
Readability: An enjoyable and easy read
Overall: At times you will want to cheer, at others you will want to shed a tear or two, but overall, I think this is a good story of sisters who are torn apart due to circumstances beyond their control, and the events and people who help them come together again.

About the Book: (from the One2One Network newsletter)

Sisters Lindsay and Kerrie Ann have known hardship from an early age. Without guidance from their neglectful mother, their only aid came from an unlikely source, a retired exotic dancer by the name of Miss Honi Love. When the girls’ mother was sent to prison, Miss Honi tried unsuccessfully to save them from being separated and sent into foster care.

Thirty years later, Lindsay is still trying to reconnect with her sister. The owner of a bookstore in the sleepy California seaside town of Blue Moon Bay, she was lucky enough to have been adopted by a loving couple. Unbeknownst to her, Kerrie Ann has suffered a very different life. Bounced from one foster home to the next, she ran away as a teenager before becoming a drug-addicted single mother. Now, newly sober, Kerrie Ann is fighting to regain custody of the little girl who was taken from her.

Neither sister’s expectations are met when they’re finally reunited. But as the two sisters engage in the fiercest battles of their lives, they are at last drawn together despite their differences, restoring belief in the unshakable bond of family.

Excerpt: (From the author's website)

In a moment of terrible clarity, Kerrie Ann took in the squalid scene through the cops’ eyes. She saw her daughter—really saw her—for the first time in weeks: how dirty and unkempt she was and how thin she’d gotten, her ribs sticking out of her narrow brown chest like rungs on a ladder. She saw the stain on the seat of her underpants that had come from not wiping herself properly and have no one to do it for her, the crust of dried food around her mouth. When had she last fed Bella?

Kerrie Ann saw the Children’s Services logo on the card and felt herself hurtling back in time. The old nightmare playing itself over, this time with her child. Her thoughts returned to Lindsay. She still couldn’t get over the fact that she had a sister. Even weirder was that she had no memory of her. How was it possible for those years to be a blank slate?

Her counselor at the clinic, Mary Josephson, a recovering heroin addict with twenty years of sobriety, suggested she call Legal Aid. Days later she had a court date. But that was only the first step.

Kerrie Anne soon discovered that good intentions weren’t enough. Her resume, which listed only a string of short-term jobs, was hardly an incentive for anyone to hire her. The part-time job at Toys “R” Us was the best she could do until she got her GED and some kind of occupational training. And without full-time work, how could she afford an “appropriate” place to live? Life was a series of dominoes: Knock one down, and the rest followed suit. If she could just get her legs under her . . .

Which was where her sister came in. Lindsay was the only card she had left.
Copyright © 2009 by Eileen Goudge. All rights reserved.

About the Author: (from Amazon)

A native of northern California who now lives in Manhattan, Eileen Goudge is the New York Times bestselling author of 13 novels, 32 young adult novels, numerous short stories and magazine articles and one cookbook. When she isn’t writing, Goudge enjoys baking for friends and neighbors.

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