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Nov 14, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

3.5 stars
Sarah Addison Allen is one of the very few ladies' lit authors I can tolerate. Her stories are sweet and fluffy and utterly insubstantial, but they're nice when you need a break from heavier fare. I always know what I'm asking for when I pick one up, so I can't complain too much afterward that they're sappy and implausible. That would be like ordering vanilla ice cream and then complaining that it wasn't mashed potatoes and gravy. Or <cough cough> buying a Britney Spears CD More...

4 comments like (17 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2011

Heidi rated it:

The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Five stars: Another delicious, heart felt read from Sarah Addison Allen.

What is home to you? A comfortable, warm place filled with loving faces? Is it the scent of freshly baked cookies or pie wafting through the air? A worn blanket draped across a favorite chair and a good book? The soft, silky touch of a beloved pet’s fur? Finding shelter in the protective embrace of a lover? Home is more than just a place it is a destination where you feel More...

14 comments like (7 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2011

Mollie *scoutrmom* rated it:

This is the third novel by Allen that I've read, and I am happy to say they cannot be pigeonholed. There are two romances going on here, but the theme of the story is acceptance.

The author is so skilled at characterization that I don't even notice it being done. These people simply seem to exist.

I love Allen's way with words. "It had probably been an opulent white at one time, but now it was gray, and its Gothic Revival pointed-arch windows were dusty and opaque. I More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2010

Arlene rated it:

I very much enjoyed The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen as Emily and Julia's storylines were both engaging and refreshing to read. All of the characters in this story were likeable and the plot was infused with steady-paced intrigue and moments of mystical enchantment that kept me captivated the entire time.

In this story, seventeen year old Emily Benedict arrives in Mullaby, North Carolina, a town filled with misfits, after the death of her mother Dulcie. When she co More...

8 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 01, 2010

Liriel27 rated it:

I received an advance copy of this through First Reads, a program which consistently makes me happy.

Allen is one of those authors who puts me in a pensive mood, like my brain has to digest her style and story for a bit before I can really decide what to do with it. I'm a fan of her magical realism, because they all seem rooted in a greater emotional arc for her characters. I am also willfully old-fashioned in my appreciation of her plotting.

This book satifies my desire, More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 06, 2011

Juju rated it:

Like a glass of sweet tea on hot Southern day, The Girl Who Chased the Moon is refreshing, rich, and deliciously Southern. The day my book arrived I had reached a reader's plateau. Nothing seemed interesting. Then I arrived home to a tiny package. Immediately (with in moments of opening the parcel) I knew this was the book that would reignite my vigor for reading. Sarah Addison Allen doesn't write. She paints beautiful images with her words. The kind of words you can almost taste.

Revie More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 15, 2010

Michelle rated it:

Two Christmases ago, my co-worker gave me a book. No surprise there, but the particular book she presented me with was unlike anything I had ever come across before. The book was Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen and the genre was magical realism. As soon as I started in, I was lost. I was in love. Upon sinking into the story, I found myself awash in mouth-watering food, complicated yet beautiful relationships, and surrounded by intriguing people with a little touch of magic. Did I mention th More...

1 comment like (16 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2011

Dana rated it:

I am half way through the book and I am just simply in love with this sweet book, I could not put it down even though it was 3am in the morning, ohhh the talk of food through some of it was making me so hungry!! Another book that is a short read that I will be done with tonight.

Done!!!! And what a wonderful book it was!!!!!

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

May 13, 2010

Min rated it:

This should really be 2.5 stars, but I give the benefit of the extra .5 for the entertainment value.

There were things I really loved about this book, and there were things I really didn't like about this book. Mainly, I loved Addison Allen's descriptions of both the normal (the small town, the brown leaves, the lake, etc) and the magical elements (Win's warmth, Stella's husband's black powdery soot left on the legs and necks of other women, Sawyer seeing/sensing sweets, the wallpape More...

2 comments like (19 people liked it)

Mar 22, 2011

Kathryn rated it:

Oh goodness, again Sarah Addison Allen has written a charming book. Just enough magic, glitter and sugar. I loved every page....

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2011

Belle rated it:

Wow! I had fun reading this. I had a bunch of books read before this one, kind of sad, with the drama and stuff. So I thought I needed something different for a while. And I'm not wrong by picking up this one. I'd find myself smiling along while reading :)

Although, to be honest, I expected a little too much from it when I heard magical. I expected Mullaby to be an other-worldly magical sort of town, and I think I can count with just one hand all the things magical, literally, that ha More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 16, 2011

Relyn rated it:

8-19-10
If you look at the statistics, it is not often that an author pens a marvelous first book. And yet, I often find myself enamored of first books. They seem to often be written with both the clearest eye and the most innocence. I have rarely found that I enjoyed a second or third book as much as the first. For example, I love Elizabeth Berg's earliest books, but am often bored by or disappointed in her recent offerings. And Sue Monk Kidd has certainly never been able to match Secr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 21, 2010

Kerstin rated it:

This was another magical and beautiful story by Sarah Addison Allen, filled with likeable characters.

After her mothers death, Emily is moving to Mullaby to live with a grandfather she never knew. She soon finds out that the small town is filled with misfits; there is for example her grandfather the giant and the Coffey family that don't leave their house after dark. She realizes that she might have a hard time fitting in, as everybody seems to despise her late mother for the things s More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2012

Jennifer rated it:

From My Blog:[return]The Girl Who Chased the Moon is a delightfully intriguing story of family, secrets, friendship, love and the enchanting town of Mullaby, North Carolina. Things are most definitely not as they appear in this charming novel by Sarah Addison Allen. Not having read Allen's previous two novels I had no expectations going into The Girl Who Chased the Moon. While this is not a genre I would typically choose to read, I am glad it was offered to me, for I found this novel to be a del More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 04, 2011

Margaret rated it:

When Emily Benedict's mother dies, Emily goes to her old hometown to live with her grandfather Vance. As Emily searches for her mother's history, she becomes entangled with mysterious Win Coffey, who has secrets of his own. Meanwhile, Vance's neighbor Julia Winterson, bakes delicious concoctions and dreams of her past, of connections made but long broken.

As with Allen's other novels, this one is light, charming, and faintly magical, but somehow, I didn't enjoy it as much. Partly it More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 12, 2010

Roxy rated it:

I really enjoyed and liked Sarah Addison Allen's previous two books so I was excited when I found out she had another out. The Girl Who Chased the Moon was a good read, very quick and enjoyable but I don't think it lived up to the other two. On it's own I liked it but in comparrison, it was missing something. In a way it seemed like it should be a YA book. The characters drew you in as did the town but it seemed as though she could have written a much more in depth story here. The book desc More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 26, 2011

Tanja rated it:

Allen has such a beautiful way of writing. When I read one of her books I feel like I sat down to a rich, delicious meal and when I finish I am completely satisfied. Her imagery is to tangible that I feel like I am tasting the things she describes. It makes me wish I could write and express myself in such a clear manner.

I loved the characters and the story was sweet. If you have read her other books, you know she loves to add just a touch of magic to her books. I would have to say t More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2010

Janelle rated it:

I'm so pleased to see that Sarah Addison Allen came back to her magical writing as she did in Garden Spells. This woman has such an incredible knack for describing sight, sound and feelings with food. What better combination can a book have than love and sugar?!

Combine some magic, lots of romance, a bit of mystery, some elusive lights glowing in the woods, tasty sweets and what do you have? The perfect recipe called The Girl Who Chased The Moon.

And on a side note...man a More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jul 20, 2010

January rated it:

I give this book 3 1/2 stars. I enjoyed reading this book a lot and couldn't put it down! It was a quick, easy and uplifiting read! It is a really cute story! This book is a perfect quick summer/beach read if you are looking for one.

The reason I only gave it 3 1/2 stars is because I knew EXACTLY what was going to happen about halfway through the book and the second half of the book just wasn't as good knowing that. I also think the end should have been a little different *Spoile More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 02, 2011

Audrey rated it:

I love this type of magic realism -- Alice Hoffman and Joanne Harris are both favorites of mine, so I'm glad to have found and added Allen to the list. And while there was much about this story that I enjoyed, I felt, in the end, that I didn't really get to know the characters (with the exception of Julia) well enough and that things wrapped up too nicely by the end of the book. Things just felt too shallow, and I was really hoping for something deeper -- something that could really embrace and More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 29, 2011

Michelle rated it:

After her mother dies, Emily is sent to Mullaby, North Carolina to live with a grandfather she never knew existed. Her mother never spoke of her childhood and Emily doesn't understand why the town has such resentment for her mother. One of the few people to befriend her is Julia, a local resturant owner. Julia grew up in Mullaby, but left as a troubled teen and never looked back until her father died. She plans to be in Mullaby only for a short time while getting her fathers' affairs in ord More...

0 comments like

Apr 14, 2011

Molly rated it:

Here two very different women discover how to find their place in the world…no matter how out of place they feel...

That blurb excerpt is a little lame, and doesn't do the story justice. I would hesitate to call this urban fantasy, because the setting isn't particularly urban (sort of small-town Southern) and the fantasy is less fantasy than ... a touch of magical realism, basically. But it is the story of two women, one 17 (Emily) and one in her thirties (Julia). Emily is struggling with her More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2012

Allison rated it:

This is a nice, short, cute read that we read for book club this month. It was very refreshing to read something so simple after reading the Millennium trilogy. I really liked the Julia character. She was extremely relate able to me. I grew up in a small town where every one knows your business and loves to get into your business. I also was an outcast in that town and so her perspective reminded me of my high school years. I do wish she hadn't been so hard on Sawyer, what a cutie. Yes, h More...

0 comments like

Feb 09, 2012

Teena rated it:

Emily is 17 and her mother has recently died. She has to live in a small town with her only relative, her rich old grandfather who she'd never met or knew existed. Emily's mother had left town in the midst of a scandal right after high school.

Julia had been an outcast in high school and bullied by Emily's mother. Twenty years later, Emily and Julia are neighbours and is one of Emily's few friends.

Sawyer is still sniffing after Julia ... they had a one night stand in hi More...

2 comments like

Dec 30, 2011

Chris rated it:

Loved it! A quick read, but I was totally hooked. A girl goes to live w/ her grandfather she didn't even know existed in a small town in North Carolina she had never heard about. Her mother recently died, and had told her nothing of her past and hometown. It's a strange place. Her grandfather is 8 feet tall, the neighbor bakes cakes with the windows open, and there are these lights in the woods that are said to be ghosts of family who will not go out at night. Her mother it turns out has q More...

0 comments like

Nov 28, 2011

Anne (Booklady) rated it:

Once again we are taken to North Carolina. Mullaby has its share of oddities: a kind, elderly Giant, changing wall paper, and mysterious lights. Seventeen year old Emily Shelby doesn’t mind these as much as she minds the fact that her Grandpa Vance and the other residents of the sleepy town won’t discuss her late mother, Dulcie. And why didn’t her mother tell her about Mullaby and the man “who is so tall, he can see tomorrow”? Luckily, Julia Winterton lives next door. Emily bonds with the young More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 24, 2011

bookczuk rated it:

I like the recipe of magic, love, and cooking that Sarah Addison Allen seems to stir into all her books. I read somewhere that sometimes the most enchanting bits (like the tree in Garden Spells or the power of cakes in this book, were not originally planned in the story, but wrote themselves in.

This book was lovely to read. Though perhaps not my favorite of the author's works, it still had some absolutely enchanting moments and some real surprises. For starters, I had the girl of More...

1 comment like

Sep 29, 2011

Alayne rated it:

The Girl Who Chased the Moon is not Sarah Addison Allen’s best novel, but that doesn’t make it awful. I’ll get the bad parts over with quickly: partially cheesy dialogue, semi-cheesy romance, predictable plot and outcome. Done. Moving on.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon contains all the magic and sparkle of Sarah’s previous novels, this time in the form of the sweetness of cake and the glow of young love. Emily Benedict moves to her mother’s hometown following her death. Greeted with cold More...

0 comments like

Aug 08, 2011

Cat rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Aug 05, 2011

Marleen rated it:

Emily Benedict moves to Mullaby, North Carolina, to live with the grandfather she never knew she had after her mother dies. She has no idea why her mother never talked about her past or her family and is determined to find out.
As soon as she enters her grandfather’s house she knows she has entered a slightly different world. Her grandfather turns out to be an eight feet tall giant, there are ghostly lights in the garden at night and the wallpaper in her bedroom changes according to her mo More...

0 comments like

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