Title: Graffiti Moon Author: Cath Crowley Publisher: Random House Children’s Books Published: February 14th, 2012 Source: NetGalley
The plot:
Year 12 has ended, and Lucy is looking for Shadow, the graffiti artist whose work is all over the town and her long-time crush. So she accepts to go with her two best friends on all-night ‘adventure’, to celebrate the end of high school, but they ‘bump’ into Ed, Leo and Dylan. Ed is the guy whose nose Lucy broke in Grade 10, on their first date, so that makes him the last person Lucy wants to see. But when Ed takes her on all-night Looking-for-Shadow-adventure, Lucy will be faced with the truth, and will realize that the one thing she was looking for was right before her eyes.
*I received this book in exchange of an honest review.* I’d like to thank Random House Children’s Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book before it was released.
Now, I thought this book was AMAZING. I was completely blown away by Crowley’s writing! She just manages to throw all her ideas into one big book and make it work. Work perfectly.
The story all alone is great. It’s really about finding yourself and opening up your eyes to what was in front of you all the time, but you didn’t see it because you were too blind to see anything else than what you wanted to see. And I loved this, it’s so realistic and I could define myself in this story, too.
The characters. Every single character has a very well-defined personality. And I also liked that, while they all had this ‘crust’ of attitude on the outside and while they pretended to be strong, they were actually very soft on the inside and they had fragile personalities, and you can see that especially at Leo and Ed and a bit at Lucy.
The book is told from three point of views: Lucy’s, Ed’s and Leo’s, which is only expressed in poetry. I didn’t use to like that before, but Crowley manages to make it work somehow, and I really liked it, I liked how I could get more than just one point of view and how I could enter each character and feel his/her feelings and ideas.
Art plays a big role in this book. It really made the book even better 🙂 And it’s actually one of the things that brings Ed and Lucy together. I really liked how Cath Crowley wrote mostly about modern art, and the glassblowing objects Lucy made. I also liked how Crowley described the sentiments that the pieces evoked and how she described every piece.
Also, Graffiti Moon is funny. Cath Crowley has a good sense of humour. There were some scenes and sentences which made me fall off the couch because I was laughing really hard. (Not literally, but you know what I mean.)
And, most of all, I liked that the story is full 0f love! (Ok, not really full of love, but still, it plays a big part.) I think you already know that I’m a sucker for love 😀 I really liked the love story between Lucy and Ed and the secondary love stories: Daisy and Dylan and Jazz and Leo.
Overall, I turned out liking this book more than I thought I would and I highly recommend you read it 🙂
My Rating: 5/5 stars
Graffiti Moon quotes:
“Every time he looked at me I felt like I’d touched my tongue to the tip of a battery. In art class I’d watch him lean back and listen and I was nothing but zing and tingle. After a while, the tingle turned to electricity, and when he asked me out my whole body amped to a level where technically I should have been dead. I had nothing in common with a sheddy like him, but a girl doesn’t think straight when she’s that close to electrocution.”
“We’ll meet and click and sit up all night and everything will tip out of me and into him and the other way around and while we’re tipping the night will fade and the world will get pink and in that pinkness he’ll kiss me.”
“What are you doing?’ ‘Asking the universe questions.’ ‘ The universe just dumped you over the side of a steep hill. You really want to ask it questions?’”
“… I ask, ‘Do you think Dylan’s telling the truth?’
Daisy checks her face in a little mirror, then hands it to Jazz. ‘You want me to find out?’
‘Let’s not ruin it by calling them liars.’
‘…I won’t ruin it. I’ve got this special way of getting the truth out of Dylan.’
‘How?’ I ask.
‘I kick him in the balls.’
‘ That’s pretty special.’”