The Last of the Moon Girls by Barbara Davis

  

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Magical Realism
Content: Strong Language, A mild sex scene

 

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.

 

I've said before that I'm drawn to mysteries that involve the main character revisiting the past in some way and so I was looking forward to trying this book. Plus, it had the added twist of magical realism, so that made it extra intriguing. I ended up liking this ok but not loving it. It was a little slow at times and I found myself getting bored. It was never a book that I couldn't wait to get back to, and that disappointed me a little. 

The mystery wasn't too hard to figure out, but it was enjoyable enough. I liked a couple of the supporting characters, but I got annoyed with Lizzy after a while for wanting to continue to run away from her heritage. In fact because she was trying to reject her heritage and everything that went with it, it didn't really make sense in the story when she said she could never get married and have a family because Moon girls didn't do that. Wouldn't she have been more than happy to do the opposite? Her reasoning is that she doesn't want to have a daughter to carry on the line, but she could have simply not had kids. Her love interest even said he didn't care if they never had children. It just felt like needless drama.

There is a supporting character that plays a big part in this book that I liked for the most part, but she was supposed to be from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I'm from Baton Rouge, so needless to say I was really paying attention to this character and everything she said and did, and let me tell you, the minute she called crawfish "crawdads" I no longer believed she was from there. It's a minor thing that most people aren't going to know the difference about or even care, but I did and I really think authors should do their research before they write characters from a place.

Overall this was an ok read. There were a few things I liked about it and a few things I didn't, and I'm not sure if I will ever try another book by this author.