Book Review: Painting the Moon by Traci Borum

Reviewer: Allie

Noelle Cooke is a lonely thirty year-old woman living in southern California.  She receives a letter with the news that the last family member on her mother’s side, her Great Aunt Joy, a reclusive artist living in England, has passed away and left Noelle her whole estate.  After discovering a treasure trove of paintings that her aunt never shared with the world, Noelle finds herself a very rich woman and decides to start a new life in the same small English village her aunt called home.  As a teenager, Noelle spent her summers in England with her grandmother and great aunt, but she hasn’t been back since her mother died twelve years earlier.  After reconnecting with Jill and Adam, her old friends from those long ago summers, Noelle’s life gets very complicated.

The story is quite lovely, and Borum is a gifted writer with a talent for imagery, dialogue and characterization.  At the beginning of the book, Noelle is a woman with no anchor in the world and I felt very sorry for her.  Then, due to the loss of a loved one, her luck begins to change.  There’s a bit of a mystery involving her great aunt and her grandmother, who were estranged for ten years.  I enjoyed the plot element of Joy’s diary that gave clues to the past.  I connected with most of the characters in the book, but found myself frustrated with the love story of Noelle and Adam.  They are so clearly meant to be together and the reasons that they weren’t didn’t ring true for me.  A very simple conversation, when they first reconnected, could have saved everyone a whole lot of angst.  But then again, I guess we wouldn’t have had a story.  Still, the book is a pleasant read with interesting characters and a great peek into life in a small village and the art world of London.

3 ½ stars