Elizabeth Sinclair

Garden of the Moon is at turns confusing and just a shade disturbing. The synopsis I read for the book gave away a lot of the surprises, so I spent much of the book wondering when they would be revealed instead of just flowing along with the narrative.

Sara Wade started out a fun and interesting character. A 19th century Ghost Whisperer, she moves to her grandmother's old plantation to escape her mother's cold condemnation and is excited by the prospect. Except the plantation does not have the same feeling of safety and peace as it did when she was younger. If this Sara had stuck around for longer then the first 40 pages or so, I would have been a lot happier. As it stood her ability to see and talk to ghosts got pushed aside except when in relation to her Gran or Jonathan (and occasionally Katherine) and with it seemed to go a lot of her personality.

Sara's behavior and personality becomes erratic, as her obsession deepens and she grows desperate. She doesn't act in what people would call a 'sane' manner at all and I can't help but wonder that Julie and Sara's personal slave Raina do not call the doctor before she collapses. After her collapse she continues to act strangely and seems to only live so she can find Jonathan again.

The whole romance between Jonathan and Sara is disturbing on certain levels. Reincarnation is meant to be the basis of why Sara reacted so strongly to Maddy's diary, looked so much like her and why Jonathan's ghost was drawn to her. It was also used to explain why Sara was able to time travel back to Maddy's body while reading the diary. Until the very very end the 'love' between Sara and Jonathan only occurres when Sara is Maddy. The end declaration from Jonathan was a deus ex machina that had no supporting evidence throughout the novel.

If the author has left out the reincarnation talk, I think this could have been a better time travel romance. Unfortunately between the perplexing mechanics of the reincarnation, time travel and Sara’s complete personality swap, I was not able to enjoy this book as much as I had hoped. Overall, an interesting twist that I wish had just been done a bit differently.… (meer)

There were more positives than negatives which is always a good thing when you come out the end of a book and know your time was well spent.

This is just a sweet romance which will allow you to kill some time in an entertaining way. Since it is storm season, at least where I’m at, and the power keeps going out it’s always useful to have a decent book around to help you ignore the storm or your inability to binge watch Netflix.

This is the second in a series and although characters from the first pop up a bit in here it’s not overly necessary to have read the first to appreciate this. You may want to just to have that background but it won’t take away your enjoyment of this one.

I liked all of the interesting animal facts sprinkled in which was a necessity since one of the main characters is a Vet. If you’re an animal lover you should enjoy the cool tidbits sprinkled throughout about wild life.

The pace isn’t bad, the characters are fairly decent even tinged with a bit of complexity you don’t normally find in a romance genre novel. There were no graphic XXX scenes because the author put a good amount of effort into her story line and content. The plot even seemed realistic so it wasn’t a soap opera romance.

The only negatives I found were that it did have some predictability in that you could figure out easily, especially early on, how this book would end and that it stuck to the prototypical formula of the main characters having to overcome some kind of obstacle in order to discover love. But if you’re looking for a book that will keep you from being bored and don’t need something to give you a life lesson or provide cheap thrills then this is your go to novel hands down. The positives still outweigh any contrite issues.… (meer)