Blood Moon

Frankie struggles with the fallout after a meme about her awkward first sexual experience goes viral.

Frankie and Harriet have been best friends forever. They share a treehouse with a telescope and a passion for astronomy and photography. But Frankie becomes annoyed as Harriet becomes more boy-obsessed, and Harriet thinks Frankie is prudish and judgmental. But there is a boy Frankie secretly likes—in sweet Benjamin, she finds her science geek equal. After Frankie and Harriet have a blowup, Frankie and Benjamin share a sexual experience, her first, during which she gets her period. Initially, the couple are able to move past the awkwardness good-naturedly. But the next day at school, everyone’s buzzing about what happened, and a nasty show more meme about it goes viral. As the online response to the meme grows increasingly violent and terrifying, Frankie’s fear and shame are compounded by the seeming betrayal of people she trusted. This beautifully written novel in verse is equal parts tender and tough, covering a broad swath of adolescent concerns, from orgasms to the dark side of the internet. Cuthew’s depiction of online bullying and harassment is graphic and spot-on; funny dialogue helps to lighten the intensity. All characters seem to be White.

A powerful, fiercely feminist novel that normalizes menstruation and confronts destructive cyberculture. (Verse novel. 13-18)

-Kirkus Review show less

This novel in verse tells the story of Frankie, a high school student whose period starts while she is being intimate with her new boyfriend. This experience becomes known and literally goes viral, exposing Frankie to on-line bullying, threats and puts her cherished summer intern position at risk. It also alters her relationship with her best friend, Harriet.

A novel in verse makes character development less prominent in a story than I usually like. In this case, though, the immediacy of the writing style helped me to experience what Frankie was feeling and to empathize with her. As an adult who great up before the digital age, I am horrified at how little privacy so many people have and how it seems to be devalued, even by those who show more are not victims. The novel shows the devastating impact of public shaming, and how old-fashioned person-to-person friendship and dialogue can help. show less

Being a teenager is challenging. Navigating a first sexual experience is awkward. Getting your period during that first encounter takes awkward to a whole other level. Luckily, Frankie's crush is pretty chill, and they both agree it's no big deal. But then the rumors at school begin...

This novel in verse was superb and totally relatable — if you're a girl and haven't experienced a situation like Frankie's, you've almost assuredly been mortified at one point or another at the idea. The teenage voice comes through authentically, and I appreciate the author's effort to destigmatize completely normal bodily functions, which have historically been regarded with fear and revulsion, with grace and dignity.

I received this ARC via show more LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. show less

When it is revealed that Frankie started her period while being intimate with her boyfriend, a moment of embarrassment turns into weeks of embarassment as a mean spirited meme goes viral. Blood Moon shines a light on how internalized misogyny causes both boys and girls to denigrate women for their bodily functions and sexuality. The ending was happily tied up, but the shame spiral and isolation that the main character experienced as she lost control of the narrative of her story felt grounded in reality.

This is a young adult book. The language is coarse but the sexual activity is depicted quite modestly. One of the few (if not first) young adult novels I've read where the female character openly achieves orgasm with her boyfriend, and show more the whole intimate experience is written positively. #endperiodstigma show less

4.5 Stars

CW: Horrific period shaming sexual content, slut shaming, threats of rape, sexualisation of periods, cyber bullying

Well I feel like I have just read something incredibly important.

This verse novel looks at changing the narrative around women, periods and sex. Lucy explores period shaming, slut shaming and toxicity between women on social media in this engaging story. It is very intense at times and I felt ill at the threatening nature of the online bullying that Frankie faced after a meme about her went viral. I honestly could not put this down as I felt connected to this story and invested in the characters. Absolutely fantastic!

I am not this book’s target demographic. I usually don’t go for YA but social media and public shaming are topics I find interesting, so I thought I’d give this a shot. I missed entirely that this was written in verse. I am a poetry heathen - Shel Silverstein is the extent of my enjoyment. Typically, I find it overwrought and contrived. It worked for this book, though. Yes, sometimes I found it a bit emo, but that worked well with the YA first-person narrative so it didn’t really detract. At first it felt a bit like a Tumblr post in text message format but again, that kind of fits with the book so it worked for me.

The story was very engaging, mostly because of the emotional intensity particularly in the middle section. Some bits show more brought me back to the awkwardness of my teenage years and other parts raised good questions about unequal treatment of female vs male students. Even with the slightly awkward (to me) style, this was very engaging and I read it in one sitting.

Of course, part of the reason I read it so quickly is that, for all the pages, there is not a lot of text. It’s really closer in length to a novella. It took me just over an hour to read and I felt like I was constantly turning pages. Perhaps I read verse wrong.

Also, while the end was a bit of a feel-good wrap up that would work well in a movie, I felt it was a bit too pat. Particularly the fallout of the shaming. We went from Frankie having a panic attack because she thinks the delivery man is going to attack her to everyone all laughing and empowered with no residual problems. A few other moments struck me as not quite realistic as well. Would her volunteer job really tell her to leave because her picture was used in a meme? Don’t most adults assume bullying like that to not necessarily be based on truth? And even if it is true, wouldn't most easily see her as the victim? I suppose an argument can be made that since it is sexual, they are judging her for that, as women are judged regularly, but it doesn’t sit quite right with me. And the ending still left me with some questions that I felt were little plot holes. Where did Jackson get the picture from? Did he just randomly get blood on his hands and snap a pic? And where did he get the picture of Frankie from? Hacked from Harriet’s account because her password was easy to guess? Seems a lot of effort when I’m sure he could have found a different picture of her somewhere else much easier. Lastly, the description of Frankie’s dad was just plain uncomfortable to me. At the beginning, he is described as having “squealed” something which completely threw me off. There are few men, or adults of either sex, that I have seen or can imagine squealing so right away I felt some cognitive dissonance in regards to the father. Perhaps his description is trying to make a comment about masculinity, etc, but as his characterization would have been awkward even as an adult female, it was weird. But regardless of those imperfections, I still enjoyed the book a surprising amount. show less

I am constantly thankful that social media did not exist when I was an adolescent. Teenagers can be impulsively cruel and this novel in verse does an amazing job of demonstrating exactly that in today's heavily documented reality. What's crazy is that, no matter how far we've come in other areas, we are STILL stigmatizing periods.

This book should be given to all our daughters and then all our sons. And probably parents too.