Blue Moon

The Runaways #3

by Jill Marie Landis

Lost in the watery backwoods of an Illinois swamp, a frightened young runaway meets a lonely stranger...two wounded souls hiding from the world. Together, in a treetop sanctuary, they would learn the importance of trust, and forgiveness--and moonlight... Noah LeCroix, half-French and half-Cherokee is convinced he's the oldest living male virgin in southern Illinois and certain he's destined to be alone forever...until one fateful night when he hears a bone chilling scream from the depths of the swamp.

Olivia Bond is on the run from a terrible year as a captive in a whorehouse in New Orleans. Hopelessly lost, Olivia is unconscious by the time Noah finds her, a disgraced heroine who finds freedom in forgiveness and the love of a reclusive hero who dares to stay and give his heart when running would be easier.

Note: this is a re-issue of a classic "old school" style historical romance with explicit love scenes. It was not written for the Inspirational reader.

Genres: Romance, Historical Romance, Historical, Westerns, Historical Fiction, Beauty and The Beast, Native American

336 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1999

About the author

JILL MARIE LANDIS is the bestselling author of nearly thirty novels which have appeared on the NYT bestseller list, USA Today and other national bestseller lists. She has won numerous awards for her heartfelt characters and sweeping emotional historical romances that include SUMMER MOON and MAGNOLIA CREEK and the Irish Angels Series; HEART OF STONE, HEART OF LIES, and HEART OF GLASS. All of her Historical Romances are available in eBook format.

She is currently writing The Tiki Goddess Mysteries series which includes MAI TAI ONE ON, TWO TO MANGO, THREE TO GET LEI'D, TOO HOT FOUR HULA and HAWAII FIVE UH-OH! from Bell Bridge Books.

Toes in the sand and head in the clouds, she is living the dream in Hawaii with her husband, Steve. Jill Marie loves to spend hours at the beach reading or writing and she also loves dancing the hula.

Reviews

[♥ℳelody · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.75 conflicted stars*

This book had me feeling all kinds of things. I'm not even sure how to rate it.

This had the potential of being a full blown emotionally raw beautiful love story that ages well. But it fell short in some places and focused on the wrong parts for me to be satisfied. This is a very dark story, it's not fluff and deals with a lot of heavy stuff. I personally love dark emotional reads, as long as the development and payoff is good, I'm down. So I was hoping to get something really great here.

The heroine Olivia Bond, at 18, is kidnapped by pirate thieves who trap her family on the Ohio river during their journey moving to Illinois. When the thieves hold them at gunpoint they make an offer to take Olivia to spare her family's lives (and they somehow can immediately tell she's a virgin 😒). Her father wavers while her young stepmother screams to spare her 2 young boys and begs Olivia's father to go along with it and give them Olivia. So Olivia is taken and then sold to a gambler and whorehouse owner in New Orleans, Darcy Lackanel. For the next year she's kept as his own personal "guest" locked in his suite where she has to do everything he tells her to do, teaches her how to have sex and rapes her continuously. A point of fact that seems to be continually dismissed and redressed through this book. But more on that in a minute.

The story starts off intense with a lost, disoriented, terrified heroine in the middle of the woods frantic trying to find her way back to her family and that's where the hero finds her.

The one bright spot in this otherwise dark, slow dragging, damp story is the hero, Noah LeCroix. This guy is everything quiet, soft-spoken, awkward and Beta hero as you could imagine. He's a half Native American 30 year old man who lives in a secluded swamp and has kept to himself and away from civilization for years. He's had no human contact and prefers it that way. He discovers a lost Olivia near his home unconscious and takes her to his cabin and nurses her back to health. I found this character endearing and charming even when he was fumbling and agitated and not knowing what to do in social situations and around women. I found it realistic and honest. And the fact that he was a virgin was handled nicely too.

Now here was my problem, 2 problems actually. After becoming a virtual sex slave, Olivia bid her time and planned a whole year to escape to get back to her family at all costs. The very family who gave her up like fucking luggage and made no move to track her down or find her afterwards. But hey, whatever floats your boat dearie (no pun intended). So through the entire book this girl keeps beating herself up and worrying over her family not accepting her after what happened to her and feeling guilty for initially hating her father and stepmother for what they did because "it wasn't their fault". Uhum ok.......BUT THEY GAVE YOU UP TO THIEVES. At this point I would have been totally fine if this girl never saw her family or blinked in their direction again. But bless her forgiving doormat heart. The author went to great lengths too to redeem both her father and stepmother after she reunites with them and yes all the expected apologizes, tearful "sorries" are handed out and heavy sincere guilt is shown. But even so, the quick and easy justification the heroine made for her father and stepmother just grates the nerves and one too many shades of sad and deluded instead of selfless.

"There is no other choice. I have to go with Darcy to save Noah and Daddy. Just like that day on the river when Daddy had to give me over to the colonel and his men to save you and the boys. There was no other choice he could make. I know that now. I know he did it out of love, not because he loved me any less or you and boys any more, but to save three lives by sacrificing one."

Um....no. It's not the same thing at all. Sacrificing yourself is not the same thing as someone sacrificing you, especially when it's without your consent. I had a big problem with this way of thinking and found it so absurd. I also could have done without all the time spent on her family's POV and the strained relationship between her parents, Payson and Susanna. Because of this and all the ridiculous focus centered around the villain Darcy, the actual *lead* romance and relationship between Olivia and Noah took a backseat. This girl went above and beyond for her family for reasons I didn't necessarily agree with.

My other problem: The rape factor. The heroine carries deep shame and self-hatred over what she had to do to survive under Darcy's control. Understandably so. She hates this man and made it clear more than once how she initially fought him at every turn and mentally blocked him out when they had sex even though he would make her orgasm. But even with that, it never once was labeled as what it was: rape. A person can make you orgasm and make your body react but if it's by coercion and force, it's rape. Coming from the villain's POV it makes sense that he would think it wasn't rape but the author kept having the heroine tip toe around it in such a way that I started to notice it. And not just because of her deep shame and humiliation. I understood Olivia's internal torment, the fact that he would get her off really disturbed her and made her feel dirty which made total sense (this was great character introspection by the way). It's such a mindfuck and awful place to be mentally. But then this conversation in the end of the book between Olivia and Darcy confirmed my suspicions (and complete confusion):

"Damn it, Olivia." He stared at her in shocked disbelief. "I've never had to rape a woman in my life. Women love me."
"Forcing me is the only way you'll have me, Darcy, because I loathe you. I'd rather sleep with the devil."
"I don't want it to be like this. I've chased across the country after you, Olivia. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Darcy, I can't give you what you want anymore, not willingly."

Not willingly? Like that wasn't in question or not obvious before? This conversation takes place when Darcy finds her and forces her to come back to New Orleans with him. Obsessive narcissistic bad guy aside, Olivia never hid the fact that she didn't want Darcy when she was his prisoner. So the direction this conversation took and how Olivia made it seem that he would have to rape her now, like it never happened before because she now loves someone, didn't leave a great taste in my mouth. I didn't like the message it sent. I could be overthinking this part and I know rape was usually handled very blasé with a broad brush in old school romance books like this but I still thought here it was a little contradictory and dismissive of what the heroine went through. And that's what bothered me. It seemed to water down what he did to her because he always got her off and "never physically harmed her". It also didn't help that Darcy got to walk free at the end and with a fresh faced Scottish girl on his arm no less, eager to go with him for a 'better life' even after knowing what he did to Olivia. I found this a little tacky and such a bizarre plot twist. And once again completely undermining and dismissing what this character did to the heroine. I mean hey yeah, he bought a girl locked her up and raped her for months but eh, he had feelings for her so let's give him a parting prize in the end anyways. All is forgiven!.....The fuck it is.

Here's the thing, I usually don't mind when villains are portrayed as somewhat sympathetic or human, in fact the more human they are the better. I enjoy them more because it makes them more realistic and terrifying. And I do have to say Darcy was a very cunning, 3-dimensional flawed character who showed a smidgen of conscience and a layered POV. But still....given his actions, seeing his own victim coming to his defense at the end for a stupid plot point murder he didn't commit and getting a girl as a parting prize was too much for me and dragged the story down further. And you just had to have the heroine forgive him too? *sigh* 😒 So ridiculous. The author went above and beyond to redeem the villain for reasons I didn't understand, unless he's an anti-hero for a future book, this made no sense.

I also wasn't a fan of the emotional tug of war the heroine put the poor hero through. Every time Olivia pushed him away, she kept seeking him out afterwards and running to him for comfort after telling him they can't be together. Poor Noah. And the fact that she didn't think the town constable could stop Darcy or that Noah could protect her from Darcy I found really shortsighted.

[Julianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewed for THC Reviews
"3.5 stars" Blue Moon is a fairly good story with an interesting premise. My favorite character was Noah. He was an adorably introverted beta hero, reminding me a lot of modern-day geeks, with his shy, reclusive nature and his lack of social skills particularly with women. His status as an older male virgin, a rarity in romance novels, only served to solidify this stereotype. His awkwardness in the early chapters of the book was sweetly endearing, but I was somewhat disappointed that it only carried over minimally in the later chapters. Overall though, Noah was a really well-rendered character who I greatly enjoyed reading. It was nice to watch him change and grow throughout the book. On the other hand, I sympathized with Olivia, but felt like she was a somewhat contradictory character. At times, her fear was nearly palpable, which was understandable considering the ordeal that she had suffered, yet with all that in mind, she seemed a little too quick to give herself over to a man's touch, even one as kind and gentle as Noah. I did like the fact that Olivia was such a strong character though, who had suffered much hardship and yet had still kept her wits about her and never gave up hope. While I am not a fan of embittered characters, I do like to read characters who harbor darker emotions which they have to work through. Olivia unfortunately, in my opinion, was not one of these types of characters as she was a bit too quick to forgive her family and even Darcy, the man who had used and abused her. I'm all for forgiveness, but I think Olivia could have benefited from more complex emotions. As she was written, she seemed rather one-dimensional with her main conflict being that of not feeling worthy of Noah's love, because she couldn't forgive herself for something for which she bore no fault.

A large part of the story itself was rather heavy and intense, at times feeling almost oppressive. I don't mind stories that deal with deep dark subjects, but I've found that the best ones usually have a good balance of dark and light. For at least the first two-thirds of the book, I felt like Olivia was playing Job. Bad things just kept happening to her constantly. I think the most difficult part of the book for me to read was concerning Livvie's stepmother, Susanna, a young, vibrant woman who was so despondent as to be nearly catatonic, and her little boy who could think of no other way to reach her besides harming himself. This was just absolutely heartbreaking. There were a couple of other things that bothered me about the story, one being the timing of the initial love scene which seemed lacking in credibility. As I mentioned earlier, I just can't quite swallow the fact that Olivia would want to make love to a virtual stranger so soon after such a harrowing experience. Also, there was not really enough pay-off to the scene considering that Noah had just lost his virginity. The other bothersome thing was that at various points throughout the story, the author seemed to be trying to portray the villain, Darcy, as somehow sympathetic. Unfortunately, I found him to be too sleazy for any of the sympathy points to actually score with me. I've read other books where the author tries to redeem the villain, but in this instance, it was poorly done in my opinion. It just never made much sense in the context of the story for the author to do this unless she was planning a sequel with Darcy as the hero, which quite frankly, I don't think would interest me.

Unlike Day Dreamer and Just Once, it's predecessors in Jill Marie Landis' Louisiana series, Blue Moon gets off to a brisk start, introducing us very quickly to the main characters' back story, but then peters out at the end. When I hit the climax of the story and realized that there were still three chapters plus an epilogue left, I couldn't figure out what would fill them. Unfortunately the events that did populate them were not all that compelling. The ending was satisfying, but not spectacular, and not really as good as the ending of the previous two books in the series, particularly Day Dreamer. I did have a hard time putting the book down, but ultimately I think that had less to do with a moving plot and more to due with me anxiously waiting for something good to happen to poor beleaguered Livvie. I think the overall story would have been improved and deepened considerably if it had focused more on Olivia's emotional recovery from her ordeal and less on torturing her, as well as perhaps on Noah's feelings of inadequacy due to his scars. I felt like the story skimmed over Livvie's issues in particular, to the point of almost minimizing what should have been an incredibly traumatic event, and in the end, the answers were just too simplistic and pat for my taste.

In spite of being the third book in a series, Blue Moon stands fairly well on it's own, but I think the reader's enjoyment of the book would be enhanced by reading Just Once first. Noah was introduced in that book, and the accident which caused his scars and the loss of his eye is depicted in it as well. Also, Hunter and Jemma from Just Once make an appearance in Blue Moon and readers get to see where they are three years later. While Blue Moon was not quite what I was expecting and could have been better, it was still a generally enjoyable and worthwhile read that didn't leave me feeling like I had wasted my time. I really like scarred, imperfect heroes and the character of Noah was really the driving force that increased my enjoyment of this book. Without him being so lovable, I don't think I would have liked the story half as well. Overall it was a decent wrap-up for this trilogy.

[Amarilli 73 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questo libro è stato un po' una Cenerentola per le uscite di Maggio.
Nessuno lo leggeva, nessuno ne parlava bene... Non sapevo cosa fare e se valesse la pena di tentare.
Invece è stata una lettura diversa, che mi ha rinfrescato un pomeriggio d'afa, una vera sorpresa positiva.
Illinois del Sud, 1820: paludi, ambiente selvatico, un personaggio senza un occhio e sfregiato, mezzo indiano, che vive solo e VERGINE (ditemi se questo non è un elemento diverso nei romance), dedicandosi alla caccia e tenendosi lontano dalla civiltà.
Eppure c'è un passato di avventuriero intrepido dietro alla sua solitudine, un'esistenza vissuta tra due mondi che lo ha segnato in profondità. Quando nella sua vita irrompe una ragazza, anche lei in fuga, anche lei segnata, niente sarà più come prima.
Come dicevo, un romanzo che non conoscevo, ma che merita. Avventuroso, tormentato, insolito.
Persino il cattivo è carino e biondo, e ha una sorta di prospettiva di futuro diverso (ma non così scontato) sul finale.
Contenuto promosso, confezione un po' meno. La cover è bella, per carità, ma non c'entra proprio niente con il romanzo. E non parliamo della traduzione del titolo originale, che ha perduto l'assai più evocativo"Blue Moon"...

[Lori ◡̈ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting story line that I had not read before. For me personally, this would have been a 5-star rating if the story had focused less on who/what Olivia was running from, and more on her new growing relationship with Noah. Noah was a loner living alone in the the swampy wilderness of Illinois and a VIRGIN. This would have been an awesome romance story of watching him slowly become comfortable with being around 1.) a person, 2.) a female and 3.) a female that he was becoming attracted to.

Instead it focused on the drama of the heroine Olivia and the traumatic ordeal that she and each member of her family had gone thru and how they were recovering one year later. It was written very well, especially the post-traumatic stress syndrome with the step-mom Susanna (I could picture what I was reading perfectly), and as upset as I was in the beginning while reading the choice Olivia's father made that set off several bad chains of events, by the end of the book I could finally understand why he did it, even though I don't know that I personally agree with it.

I didn't really understand Olivia's exact relationship with the villain Darcy. To me, it just seemed as if she liked him.... but didn't like him. And then as for Darcy himself, I almost felt as if he loved Olivia, so I would start feeling bad for him. But then I would stop and remember why he was the bad guy to begin with and then have to talk myself out of feeling sorry for him... So that made for a lot of mixed feelings while reading the book... But overall I enjoyed the setting, the characters and the ending.

[Perri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story was what I would expected which I think is a good thing in picking up a historical romance. I especially liked the first half with evocative scene setting description. I thought I would be awarding four stars, but the second half was rushed with choppy action development. Overall a three

[Theresa Contreras · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a cute little story... She's kidnapped and sold to a man that only has plans to use her virgin body to please himself then once shes the perfect lover make her service others! gag! She escapes him and is injured in a swamp, and found by the sweetest man ever. :) Hes a half breed with a missing eye and a scar down his face, but hes also a stand up guy with a moral code; she is not used to a man not "using" her. He helps her mend and takes her home, hes in love and so is she but she doesnt feel worthy, he helps her to see that what happened to her was not her fault and he shows her the love a real man!

[**Sognatrice di libri** · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 stelle e 1/2

Una lettura molto scorrevole e intrigante.
La storia l'ho trovata molto interessante e piacevole non la classica storia con il bello e dannato che deve essere redento anzi tutto il contrario.
L'unica pecca è ho trovato l'inizio un pò lento ma col procedere della lettura si riprende bene.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent read, though nothing super special. Noah is the noble, innocent hero who falls in love with Olivia, who has been held as a sexual prisoner by the book's villain. Although the villain, Darcy, is after Olivia, what really keeps Noah and Olivia apart is Olivia's guilt that she allowed herself to become a whore (basically that she physically enjoyed what Darcy did to her, even though she mentally resisted).

The book is set in an atypical time and place for historical romance. Therefore it had a different feel, but I'm not sure if I really liked it.

I like that Darcy is sort of ambiguous as a villain. It's very clear that what he did was wrong and that he has the capacity for evil, but we start to see a different side of him. A suggestion that perhaps his obsession has bordered on love. He wants nothing more than for Olivia to want him, to love him the way she loves Noah. He even resists forceful rape because he wants her to want him. As his obsession wanes, he begins to feel tenderness for Olivia even And I'm a sucker for villains with more complex motives.

[Zoe · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting premise. but the storytelling style is too jumpy for me. going here and there and nowhere I want the story to go.

it isn't poorly written though. just not my style.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

i finished this book but honestly was not a fan, and made it thru most of it out of sheer spite. i don't know if my qualms come from poor aging, or if this book has simply always not been for me.

olivia is a barely adult teen who gets kidnapped and sold to darcy, proprietor of a high end brothel, and makes her escape before the story starts. noah is a recluse of half native and half white heritage (oh did i mention it's the early 1800s) who's left a life of navigating the rivers after an accident that cost him his eye. the basic story is overcoming and escaping your past, and learning to grow from it.

i have one main issue with this book, and it's the way that olivia talks about her experiences at the brothel prior to escaping. at one point darcy says he's never raped a woman, however it is so far into the book, and so far into reading how olivia was repeatedly effectively SA'd that i don't believe him. i think this in particular is poor aging, as we have a much better understanding of rape and SA now. while the characters in the book might believe it wasn't either, as a reader it definitely read as such. and that made it really hard to not completely drop the book.

other far more minor quibbles are the almost constant POV shifting. there are 5 over the course of the book, and some only last a page or so at a time. it was really jarring the first time we jumped to darcy's POV, though arguably necessary for the plot. it was a lot, and got annoying to jump at times. i wasn't a fan of the age gaps here, or that both of them had the same type of pattern- teen girl falls for man 10+ years her senior. i'm sure there are arguments of "it was a different time" or whatever, but i don't care- it was weird in this context.

while this was a quick read, i would not recommend it, and will not be reading again.

[Jerry Jares · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the last book in the series LOUISIANA. Noah LeCroix has a damaged face through an accident that occurred in JUST ONCE (book 2). He lives in a swamp alone and isolated. This life is fine until he finds injured Olivia Bond and takes her to his home to get well.

Olivia is trying to get home to her family. She has spent a year in a New Orleans brothel as the sex toy of Darcy Lankanal. Olivia is afraid of what her family may say about her life.

Darcy is obsessed with Olivia and is trying to find her. Noah quickly falls in love with Olivia and wants her to stay with him. However, he understands that Olivia must find her family and so he takes her there. This is a very unusual romance.

Louisiana
1. Day Dreamer (1996)
2. Just Once (1997)
3. Blue Moon (1999)

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

2021 Book Hoarders Challenge #15 Favorite Color

A young runaway, Olivia, gets lost in the swamp and hits her head. She is unconscious when Noah, the lone inhabitant of the swamp, finds her. He cares for her and when she finally regains consciousness, she is shocked to see his scarred face and loss of an eye. Gradually, they gain a tenuous friendship, and when he learns her story, he agrees to take her to her family in Shawneetown in the new Illinois territory. Their story, and that of her family, begins in an interesting story.

I have had the book for a couple years, when I got it at a yardsale. Wish I read it sooner.

[Rachelle Rachelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really quite forward thinking for a 90s romance. It still has it moments, but I've read 1000x worse.

Noah is not some peacocking alpha-hole rapist like a lot of romance leading men. He's quiet, kind, rugged, introverted, awkward, but extremely capable and dependable. I love him.

[Vale991b · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5/5⭐

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Noah's story. Noah has moved from where he lived close to Hunter. He now lives in a tree house in a swap in Illinois. One night he hears a scream in is swamp. Think it is a bobcat he tries to ignore it, but something will not let him. Upon investigation, he finds a beautiful, dirty unconscious woman. He has no choice but to take her back to his tree house. When Olivia wakes up, she is truly frightened. Noah assumes it is because of his face but something tells him it is more than that. When she is better, she asks Noah to take her to her family. The journey there is uneventful, but when they get there things are not like Olivia expected them to be. Noah stays to help make things easier. Well of course things are never easy and Olivia's past comes back to get her.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Noah LeCroix became a recluse and retreated to a swamp in frontier Illinois after an accident took his eye and left him scarred. He finds Olivia Bond injured and lost in the swamp. Olivia was trying to find her family, after being kidnapped and sold into prostitution in New Orleans. Noah nurses her back to health and she begins to trust again. He agrees to help Olivia find her family. But when they find them, Olivia's past comes back to haunt them.

I thought this book started out really well and liked the first half of the story. But when Olivia kept saying she was not good enough for Noah, I wanted to scream. The addition of her ex-lover into the mix didn't help the story for me. My rating: 2.5 Stars.

[Diane Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the audio version with narrator Jill Fox. The story flowed well. There were a few niggling things that bothered me. One of which was the flopping back and forth that is so common in general romance novels: will he or won't he, should I or shouldn't I, if I do, what will happen then, maybe I won't, I'm not sure, and on and on. Overall, the story was good. The romance was decent-not too much of anything that was over the top. It was more written on the realistic side, rather than the hysterical, sexually ravenous woman side that so many others tend to write. I may look into more of this author's work.

[Christy Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this a good rating because it got a good bit of an emotional response out of me, but all in all the book is TOTALLY unsatisfying.

The book deals with some horrific situations and makes no bones about it, and I love that, but I'm a sucker for a happy ending and when a majority of characters didn't get what I felt they had coming to them I dodn't find it too happy.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining historical romance with enough drama to keep me reading. Parts of it were very predictable, and I did not care for the way some story lines were wrapped up, but overall it was a fun read.

[Dee Steverson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't care for the civil war era setting

[Doranna Durgin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book--the writing is full of evocative atmosphere, the setting is clear and strong, and the story is wonderfully not-quite-unpredictable.

[Gayle Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked this one. Now I need to get the first book Just Once.

[Karen Darling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over all good story.

[Jessie Gussman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like this book had so much potential, but Landis only scratched the surface of it.

[Greeneyes Belle28 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent