3.5 Stars ( )

Once again Sarah Crossan has tugged at my heartstrings and created a beautiful poignant story, that is heartbreaking in it's simplicity. ( )

Brilliant novel. A deeply moving story. I finished it the same night as the blue moon lunar eclipse - not planned, but made the story even more poignant. ( )

Literary Merit: Excellent
Characterization: Excellent
Recommended: Recommended
Level: High School

Until I went to my review group meeting in July, I had never heard of Moonrise, nor had I ever read a book in verse. Oh man was I in for a gut wrenching, heartbreaking story told in bursts outlining the life of a teenager named Joe as he travels to Texas to live and work while his brother sits on death row, awaiting his execution.

I read this in one sitting, it was so enthralling. Joe is seventeen and hasn’t seen his brother Ed in about ten years. The majority of those ten years, Ed has been imprisoned for a crime he claims he didn’t commit, and honestly I believe him. There’s a real sense of injustice in this book, especially when Joe gets a letter from Ed detailing what happened the night the crime was committed and how police coerced Ed through sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst, and fear to make a guilty confession.

Absolutely this book makes me think about the justice system and the way the people who carry out the law are so easily corrupted. It also brings about a lot of thoughts about families and relationships and parental neglect and how those themes can affect children differently. Ed, Joe, and their sister Angela have no father figure, and their mother is basically a dead beat. After Ed is sentenced and Joe is still a small child, their mother takes off, leaving a devastated family even more devastated and torn. The kids are lucky enough to have an aunt step in and care for them, but she’s so strict it still causes head butting and drama. As Joe gets older, he gets a letter from Ed asking him to come to Texas because a date for Ed’s execution has been set. In the moments that follow, we get to see Joe on a journey to do everything possible for his brother, even if that’s simply walking miles and miles in the Texas heat (because Joe doesn’t have a car) to visit his brother every day, if only for an hour.

I really enjoyed the book overall. The characters are all fleshed out quite well and the storytelling in verse works so well to pack an emotional punch and really hit you in the feels. The back and forth between past and present helps the flow of the story to show things that happened in the past which may have in turn led to bad decision making in the future. I think by telling the story in verse it also develops the characters really well. It strips down the story to the meat and bones, leaving out all fluff, and allows the reader to get a real sense of who these people are and why we should care about them.

Moonrise is an emotional rollercoaster of fear and injustice and what it means to hope, even in the darkest of hours. It’s definitely a book that will stick with me for a long time. ( )

I received a free copy of this from Netgalley through the kindness of the publisher.

I have always admired Sarah Crossan's books. Her book -One- was kept as a bestseller and on our Buy One Get One Free and Three For Two since it first came out, being highly recommended. I always wanted to read one of them, but other obligations always came up. When I saw it as a potential Netgalley Early Reviewer, I immediately put my name forward as I saw it as a sign. So I went into this blind, and I think that this might have made my experience slightly harder than it should be.

This mostly stems from my own reading preferences in how books are written. I went into this completely blind, for some reason completely forgetting that I had dipped into -One- every now and then it had been written more in free-flowing proses where sentences can be divided between two paragraphs, and conversations between people can exist within one paragraph rather than given their own life. This caused me to find it slightly difficult to read, as my inner editor was forcing me out of the story with nearly every sentence I was feeling disconcerted with how it was written. This isn't the fault of the author. Once I managed to hit my head a few times that this was how it was written, and that there was a point to this, I fell deep into the story and didn't re-emerge until several hours later.

This story griped my heart and then just squeezed, becoming tighter and tighter as it progressed. From the first moment the Main Character (Joe) leaves home to travel to where his brother (Ed) is imprisoned, it's as if his voice leaps up in the page. The broken up sentences between paragraphs immerse the reader into this thoughts, as if you watch him carry out the motions and can hear his unique voice running through his head. He easily pulls in the emotions of the other characters around him, especially in the case of Ed, Angela (Sister) and Aunt Karen, to keep the entire story flowing at a fast-paced rate that doesn't let the reader go.

And as it feels as though it's tumbling into the abyss, as all becomes loss after loss, the reader can't help but feel the same slight hope that Joe feels. The possibility of it actually occurring is slim, because of the reality of the book mirroring the reality we live in, but at the same time the reader clings on to the same hope as Joe.

I would highly recommend this book, for anyone twelve up. It punches the reader in the chest, again and again, and drives home what is mentioned in the news, and in various publications around crime. I now have no excuse to not read her other book -One-, as I want to be able to hand this book, and her other books, to customers in the shop. ( )