Luna Review

Book Talk: Regan loves her brother and wants him to be happy, but his secret is keeping her up at night, literally.  Although her brother seems like any other boy, he feels like he's a girl.  He knows what might happen if his secret is discovered, but constantly hiding who he is takes its toll.  His one refuge is sneaking into Regan's room at night to try on dresses and apply make-up.  It's the only place he can be himself.  But eventually there comes a day when night-time excursions aren't enough.  He longs to show the world who he is, but even though Regan loves and accepts him, she's afraid that the rest of the world might not.

Rocks my Socks: I really enjoyed the characterization in this story, especially for Regan and Liam/Luna.  The characters really have some meat to them and they protagonists are not perfect and they make mistakes and I love that.  I also found the issues explored fascinating and am glad that someone wrote a YA book about it.  The story was also compelling and I found myself staying up late to finish it in one sitting.

Rocks in my Socks: I felt like the focus of the novel was too split.  The narrator is Regan and I feel like she's supposed to be the protagonist, but the way the novel is told it feels like the main character is really Liam/Luna.  Liam/Luna is the character that has the biggest change from beginning to end and is the center of the story arc.  But there is also a fair amount that's just about Regan and parts of Liam/Luna's story that are left untold.  The most frustrating part for me was that I really like Regan's story line as well and I felt that the novel ended at the completion of Liam/Luna's story arc and left Regan's unfinished.  I suppose part of the point of the story is that Regan's life is focused around Liam/Luna rather than herself but that didn't make it any less frustrating.  There were also a lot of flashback scenes peppered throughout the novel that eventually seemed a bit redundant.  Since I stayed up late to finish the novel I ended up skimming over the flashback sequences near the end of the novel so that I could get on to find out what was happening in the plot.

Every Book its Reader: I'd recommend it to 9th grade and up who enjoy contemporary issues fiction in general or glbtq fiction specifically.

Luna by Julie Anne Peters
Buy it at indiebound or check it out from your local library