B-

Painting the Moon

The cover of this book got to me. Then I read it was about a small town in the Cotswolds, and off I went. I’m not lying when I say travel within books is 212% my catnip.

Noelle inherits her great-aunt’s estate and takes a short leave from her life in San Diego to settle matters. Her great-aunt had been an up-and-coming painter with a potentially huge art career in front of her when she had a dramatic spat with her sister, Noelle’s grandmother, and shut herself away, refusing to let anyone in, and refusing to let any of her paintings, if there were any, out. Noelle puts her life on pause so she can fix up and sell the property, but when she finds some deeply hidden secrets in the house, she stays a little longer, reuniting with old friends she’d spent the summers with when she was a girl, including a man she’d had a crush on for years as a teenager.

This book had a good balance of revealing the mystery, introducing the town and the way of life in the Cotswolds, and allowing Noelle to figure things out at a pace that was interesting for the reader and didn’t make Noelle look like an idiot. If anything, she was very smart and emotionally savvy, and navigating grief and family secrets is exhausting for anyone. The story of her reclusive great aunt is a part of the development, as is Noelle’s own realizations of what constitutes her happiness, and what she’d like to do with her life. Her life makes several major changes during the course of the novel, and she was for the most part a pretty chill adult about most of it.

My problem was the love interest. This guy needed to put on his big boy pants and man up already. He was unwilling to risk himself, unwilling to be honest, and way, WAY too willing to compromise his morality and Noelle’s for what he wanted in the moment. His uncertainty is part of the tension, but it carried on WAY too long. There’s a note in my copy of the book that reads, “SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT YOU DICKBAG,” which pretty much sums up my mid-book ire at this guy.

That said, I’m curious about book 2, Finding the Rainbow, enough to want to go visit the town and the ancillary characters sooner rather than later.

– SB Sarah

When Noelle Cooke inherits a quaint English cottage and an art gallery from her famous Aunt Joy, she welcomes a departure from her San Diego routine. But the lure of the Cotswolds, combined with a locked cottage room and a revealing journal, entice her to stay and discover more, including a way to save the gallery from financial ruin. And that means remaining in England.
When her childhood sweetheart, Adam Spencer, begins work on a restoration project in Noelle’s village, their friendship blossoms. But as her feelings for Adam deepen, she struggles with memories of what might have been and yearns for a future once thought lost. Faced with a life-altering revelation Aunt Joy took to her grave and a wrenching choice regarding the man she loves, Noelle could lose far more than her heart.