A year after Luna' s mother dies, Luna wants to take a chance. She decides to clean out her mother' s studio and finds her mother' s cell phone. Bright red. Fully charged. With seven unread messages.
When I picked out this book, I though it would be a well-written murder mystery. It isn' t. The only part of the plot that' s good is Luna 's trying to find out how her mom died. That took up about one-third of the book. The other two-thirds consisted of drama, teen angst, puppy love, and extremely unrealistic and paper-thin characters. The plot was just drawn out over way too many pages, when it could 've been put nicely into a smaller book.
Luna, as a character, is confusing. One minute she says she isn' t into guys, and the next minute she says she' s liked one since eighth grade. She starts out as a shy but strong person, but actually gets weaker towards the half-way point of the book.... and goes downhill from there.
Luna' s father is a wimpy, horrible character. He' s truly not fit to play the father role, and I disliked him very much throughout the entire book.
Tile, Luna' s brother, was the only really good character. While he may seem naive because of his age, he experiences life like no other person and changes for the better over the course of the story.
While the overall message of the book is good, the way the author gets to that message is unnecessarily complicated. Saying that people who' ve not had sex before they turn 15 are prudes is highly subjective. That parents are liars, and that marriages can' t last forever is not what I want to be reading about; and unfortunately, that' s what I got when I read this.
There are multiple curse words (no f-bombs, thankfully). The concepts of divorce, adultery, molesting, and homosexuality are talked about and seen.
Reviewer Age:17
Reviewer City, State and Country: Yucaipa, California USA
