Book Review – Serious Moonlight

Title: Serious Moonlight

Author: Jenn Bennett

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Publication date: April 16th, 2019

426 pages

4.5/5 stars

Goodreads Synopsis

After an awkward first encounter, Birdie and Daniel are forced to work together in a Seattle hotel where a famous author leads a mysterious and secluded life in this romantic contemporary novel from the author of Alex, Approximately.

Mystery-book aficionado Birdie Lindberg has an overactive imagination. Raised in isolation and homeschooled by strict grandparents, she’s cultivated a whimsical fantasy life in which she plays the heroic detective and every stranger is a suspect. But her solitary world expands when she takes a job the summer before college, working the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel.

In her new job, Birdie hopes to blossom from introverted dreamer to brave pioneer, and gregarious Daniel Aoki volunteers to be her guide. The hotel’s charismatic young van driver shares the same nocturnal shift and patronizes the waterfront Moonlight Diner where she waits for the early morning ferry after work. Daniel also shares her appetite for intrigue, and he’s stumbled upon a real-life mystery: a famous reclusive writer—never before seen in public—might be secretly meeting someone at the hotel.

To uncover the writer’s puzzling identity, Birdie must come out of her shell…discovering that the most confounding mystery of all may be her growing feelings for the elusive riddle that is Daniel.

Review

Let’s go eat some pie and solve a mystery.

JENN BENNETT, SERIOUS MOONLIGHT

Hello friends! I decided to pick up a library book that I have renewed for the umpteenth time this month – so I can feel like I’m making headway with my never ending stack of books to read. I’ve read a few Bennett books, and I LOVE her contemporaries. She writes the sweetest stories, generally involving teenagers, and Serious Moonlight was no exception.

Meet Birdie, an 18 year old woman trying to find her way after losing her mother at a young age, and her grandmother recently. She is trying to become an “adult” and that means working full time – evening if that means overnight. And even if it means working with the guy she met at a diner and had sex with in his car before freaking out and running away and not speaking to him again… YEP.

I love Daniel and Birdie SO MUCH. Daniel is such a sweet, cinnamon roll and when I learned more of his background I swooned and felt so bad for him at the same time. Birdie almost doesn’t deserve him, but she comes around and I start to like her more by the middle/end of the book. They have such an easy friendship and banter, and Daniel allows her to slowly warm back up to him after her initial fright. She has her baggage, and so does he, and I like how they work through it together instead of pretending each other is perfect.

I LOVED BIRDIE’S AUNT. I frankly think everyone needs family like her. She took Birdie in when her mother died, even when her grandmother didn’t want Birdie to keep that connection. They have a close connection that perfectly blends authority figure and friend in a way the fosters trust and openness. I loved her influence and want her in my life.

So to wrap it up, I still love Jenn Bennett. Not going to change! Planning to continue reading her backlist over the next year!

Happy reading, folks! 🙂