Moonrise by Cassandra King

Moonrise by Cassandra King is an excellent novel. At first I felt it was the tiniest bit slow but I was mistaken. Let’s face it sometimes we want a fast read, other times we like to linger in the words, the sentences and the paragraphs that a writer places in front of us. Moonrise is a book to linger in, take your time, and get to know the characters as if they were people you really did meet in your life. You don’t want to read this book on the airplane but rather curled up in a comfy chair with a cup of tea or a glass of wine. I love it when I find a book that I don’t want to know how it ends, because I don’t want it to end, and then finding a book to read next becomes an ordeal. 

Via Highlands Info

 The book cover says that the book takes, “inspiration from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca,” which didn’t mean anything to me because I never read that book.

Highlands Info

Moonrise is the name of a house named after its moon gardens, which is a garden that was built to best be seen and enjoyed during a full moon. But the house is about much more than just than just the garden, it is a house in the town of Highlands in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The house belonged to Emmet’s first wife who died unexpectedly less than one year ago. After a mental breakdown, Emmet decides to leave CNN in Atlanta and take a job in Fort Lauderdale where he meets Helen Honeycutt and they date for four months and then they quickly get married.  Helen sees some photographs of Moonrise and she wants to go there for the summer. Emmet has no interest in returning to Moonrise or the friends that he and he and his deceased wife were friends with, but Helen convinces him that it is a good idea.

Via Asheville Guilde Book

When someone dies that other person does need to move on, but I must say if a male friend of mine replaced his wife (my friend) in less than a year after the deceased wife died I would not take kindly to him or his new wife, and I might be wrong, but nevertheless I believe there is a time to grieve. But how long is long enough?

Via Asheville Guide Book

If you have never been to the the town of Highlands or the Blue Ridge Mountains, no worries, as Cassandra King does an excellent job of describing the town and the other houses and the feel of living in the mountains.  If you enjoy reading about places and houses, then you will find this book very enjoyable. Moonrise itself is a historical Victorian home, passed down to their daughter Rosalyn, and she has maintained it in the style in which it was built and it is fully furnished and decorated in the Victorian era, including a painting of herself in the turret room. The other houses are also described in detail, one of which is Kit’s house which is an ultra-modern, mostly glass house that is very different from the other homes in the town of Highlands.

Via Examiner

Some of the people we meet in this book, all of them friends of Emmet’s and his deceased wife Rosalyn are Tansy who lives with Noel but they are not together as a couple, Willa the local mountain woman, caretaker of the properties when the owners are not in town, Kit who is/was Rosalyn’s best friend from childhood, Linc Varner who is recovering from a stroke and his wife Myna, and Annie who is Emmet’s daughter.

Via Meadows Mountain Realty

The book is about this new wife and how she desperately wants to be included, accepted and welcomed in this group of friends of Emmets, which I think is a bit ambitious considering the deceased wife hasn’t even  been gone a year. Even the best of people I believe would have trouble welcoming a new wife, the woman who has replaced the deceased wife of less than a year with open arms.  But as I said what is an acceptable time to grieve? Because of this Helen comes off to me as more than a bit naïve, and her feelings seem to get hurt rather easily for someone in her situation. Also we are left in the dark as to just how Rosalyn died and why she was at their vacation home when she wasn’t expected to be, and are there things left undone the that she feels the need to finish herself and is therefore still at Moonrise?

A Victorian home but no this is not Moonrise - Via Activerain

I have read all of Cassandra Kings books except for, “Making Waves,” and so I can say that she has certainly grown as a skilled writer. If someone had handed me this book and asked me to tell them who the author was I would never had thought it was Cassandra King. If you have not been a fan of Cassandra King before than I suggest you pick up this book and become a fan.  It is her best book yet. What I want to know is when is her next book is being released?


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