Snapshot Book Review: The Moon Sisters

The Moon Sisters by Therese Walsh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this as an ARC. The premise seemed somewhat intriguing (I've never read anything about synesthesia, and who doesn't like to read about sisterly dynamics?), although I probably wouldn't have picked it up based on the back-cover blurb.

Perhaps I didn't give it a fair chance, but after just 30 pages I already disliked both narrators for different reasons. Jazz I disliked for her obviousness. She's a stock character, one I've already met and who seems to go too far out of her way to tell me exactly how she feels and thinks about every little thing. When I'm reading a book, I want to be wooed with nuance, not hit over the head with a frying pan of explanation. Olivia, on the other hand, annoyed me from the outset because, after wittnessing her mother's suicide (you can tell this is going to happen from the very beginning, so don't worry--it's not a spoiler) she performs this drastic self-surgery by staring at the sun and burning away her retinas (a process which we, the readers, don't actually see occur) and then doesn't seem to express the tumult of emotions that would accompany such a drastic decision.

On the plus side, the descriptions of seeing sounds and smelling sights were quite poetic and very apt. I applaud Walsh for her ability to write about this condition (synesthesia), even if I'm not entirely sure how or why it was necessary to write into this book.

To stick with The Moon Sisters, I needed at least one character that I wanted to hear from, and such a character didn't seem to be present. Therefore, I ultimately decided that my time would be better spent reading something else.

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