If you enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife, this should be your next read!
This book had been on my To Be Read list for what felt like forever! When I saw that it was being offered on NetGalley, I immediately requested it. I think I let out a little yelp of excitement when I received the email that I was approved for a copy. I started it right away and was quickly swept up in the this story. I love any book that can transport me to another time or another place without making me feel like it’s all hocus pocus. This story was believable which is shocking because it is in essence a love story about time travel! I loved the back and forth between time and all of the details the author added to make it seem like I was in each place. I loved the love story between Lux and Joseph and the slow way it unraveled. The love between Lux and her son Benno was beautiful and tragic. As a mother to two sons, I felt every emotion she felt. The story opens with Joseph in 1906 who is running a farm community in The Valley of The Moon. (Fun fact: My Grandparents currently live in Sonoma, and it’s nickname is The Valley of The Moon.) Joseph and his community experience an earthquake and shortly after a strange fog develops all around them. Anyone who enters this fog is killed within minutes, therefore they are trapped. Then we meet Lux, who is from 1975 era San Francisco. Her life is stressful and chaotic, so when her friend agrees to watch her son for the weekend, she decides to take a short camping trip alone to the Valley of The Moon. While camping, she suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night surrounded by the same fog. However, she is able to pass into the fog unharmed. This is where our story begins to pick up speed! I won’t say any more about the plot so I don’t spoil the journey for you. This was a great book and I highly recommend it. Below are links to purchase this one on Barnes & Noble and on Amazon.
The author of the critically acclaimed Wife 22 has written a captivating novel about a love that transcends time—perfect for readers of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Time and Again, and the novels of Alice Hoffman.
San Francisco, 1975. A single mother, Lux Lysander is overwhelmed, underpaid, and living on the edge of an emotional precipice. When her adored five-year-old son goes away to visit his grandparents, Lux takes a solo trip to Sonoma Valley—a chance to both lose herself and find herself again.
Awakened at midnight, Lux steps outside to see a fog settled over the Sonoma landscape. Wandering toward a point of light in the distance, she emerges into a meadow on a sunny day. There she meets a group of people whose sweetly simple clothing, speech, and manners almost make them seem as if they are from another time.
And then she realizes they are.
Lux has stumbled upon an idyllic community cut off not only from the rest of the world but from time itself. The residents of Greengage tell a stunned and disoriented Lux that they’ve somehow been marooned in the early twentieth century. Now that she has inexplicably stepped into the past, it is not long before Lux is drawn in by its peace and beauty.
Unlike the people of Greengage, Lux discovers that she is able to come and go. And over the years, Lux finds herself increasingly torn between her two lives. Her beloved son is very much a child of the modern world, but she feels continually pulled back to the only place she has ever truly felt at home.
A gorgeous, original, and deeply moving novel about love and longing and the power that time holds over all of us, Valley of the Moon is unforgettable.
Praise for Valley of the Moon
“The literary equivalent of a farm-to-table delicacy: lovingly handcrafted, delectable and transcendent, becoming more than just a tasty appetizer but a full-course experience of love and time and all the mystical beauty that the region has to offer.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Beautifully written . . . [Valley of the Moon is] a wonderful story about belonging, love and the aching certainty that there’s something more out there . . . sure to appeal to fans of Time and Again or The Time Traveler’s Wife.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“With lovely shades of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Valley of the Moon is a magical, cinematic novel, breathlessly romantic and alive with the love of language.”—Sarah Addison Allen
“An enjoyable magic carpet ride . . . Two narrators, separated by nearly a century, tell a tale of old-time charm and contemporary agita.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Captivating.”—Booklist
“Gripping . . . This update of Brigadoon is recommended because of its well-crafted twists and thought-provoking insights into different times and cultures.”—Historical Novels Review
“A propulsive and at times deeply suspenseful novel . . . [Valley of the Moon] offer[s] powerful and perceptive considerations about the passage of time, the shape of our lives and the often unintended effects our actions have on the people and communities around us.”—Bookreporter
Book It Forward 