BETWEEN US AND THE MOON by Rebecca Maizel Book Review
Publication Date: June 30th 2015 by Harper Teen
Rating: 
– Poor
Book Summary: Ever since Sarah was born, she’s lived in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Scarlett. But this summer on Cape Cod, she’s determined to finally grow up. Then she meets gorgeous college boy Andrew. He sees her as the girl she wants to be. A girl who’s older than she is. A girl like Scarlett.
Before she knows what’s happened, one little lie has transformed into something real. And by the end of August, she might have to choose between falling in love, and finding herself.
Fans of Jenny Han and Stephanie Perkins are destined to fall for this story about how life and love are impossible to predict.
Book Review Overview:
- The protagonist seems really immature to me
- Not a fan of the romance; it’s all based on lies!
- A great audiobook listen; Luci Christian is a great narrator
Right before Sarah’s family leaves for their annual trip to Cape Cod, her boyfriend and childhood best friend breaks up with her. He says that Sarah spends too much time observing the world like a scientist and not enough time just living. Determined to prove him wrong, Sarah begins an experiment to be more like her older sister, Scarlett. Scarlett is flirty, fun, popular, and 18 years old—two years older than Sarah. When Sarah meets 19-year-old Andrew, she finds herself caught in a lie about her age and her school plans for the fall. The more time she spends with Andrew, the more she falls in love and the harder it becomes to come clean about the truth.
Generally speaking, I am not a fan of books where girls do not embrace their nerdiness. So from the beginning, I already had my doubts about this book. I have a love/hate relationship with the protagonist. I love that Sarah is a nerd at heart. I really like that she’s able to spit out nerdy space and ocean facts, but I hate how she just doesn’t embrace it. Also, I found Sarah to be quite immature in some ways. A part of me couldn’t believe that it took her until the end of the book to realize that she was basically looking for her family’s attention the entire time. Every time she did something rebellious, her response was to always check if anyone noticed that she was “being bad”. To me, she acted a lot younger than sixteen.
My biggest problem with the book is the plot. The plot revolves around Sarah basically lying about her age and where she’s going to school. She tells everyone she meets that summer (including love interest, Andrew) that she’s 18 and going to MIT in the fall. The more lies that Sarah tells to back up her story, the more I wait for the whole thing to just blow up in the protagonist’s face. The entire time, I just wanted to smack myself in the face, wondering how Sarah could ever think that this would end well.
Because the romance is all based on a lie, I was not rooting for the romance at all. Sarah keeps justifying that even though their relationship is based off a lie, Andrew is the only one who knows and accepts the “real” her. I just ended up feeling really bad for Andrew because he’s such a nice guy!!!
One thing that surprised me was that there was S-E-X in the book! The subject matter was handled very nicely (not on the same level as an adult romance novel, in case you were wondering), and I probably would have enjoyed reading the scenes more if I had been more invested in the romance.
This is one of those cases where I knew halfway through the book that I knew that my opinion of the book would not get any better. So why did I continue reading? Well, it was because of the audiobook narrator. The audiobook is narrated by Luci Christian, who does a phenomenal job of doing voices! Luci Christian was able to give each character in the book a distinct voice that really reflected the different personalities.
Overall, I was not a fan of the book… which makes me think, Am I too old to be reading this? Is that why I can’t connect with the main character?
I’ve been checking this book out today, actually! I enjoyed Rebecca Maizel’s first book INFINITE DAYS and was like, wow, she has a contemp out? After reading your review, hmm… it sounds like it would annoy me, too! I hate when YA books are based on a girl lying her way through things… especially a romance. Eeep!