Keeping the Moon

I just finished Sarah Dessen’s Keeping the Moon, which is a “coming of age” book for young girls.  Colie is dropped off at her eccentric aunt’s home for the summer while her mother, who has experienced a “new life” herself, travels around the globe selling her new fitness video!  Colie’s mother for years was a very overweight single-mother raising her very overweight daughter living from one paycheck to another… and when those paychecks dried up, they moved to the next city.  Colie attended numerous schools and always ended up being the brunt of the other children’s jokes.  It wasn’t until a small car crash in a supermarket parking lot that the families’ fortunes changed, and Colie’s mom was offered to pay back the damages to the car by working at a fitness center, two years later and 160 pds lighter her mom becomes the best aerobics instructor and hits it big making fitness videos.  Colie’s time away at Aunt Mira’s is an eye opening experience as she falls into a part-time waitress job, though only 15 years old, and works with two young twenty year olds, who show her how to begin to feel confident about yourself and block out the noise from the “enemies” around us always trying to knock us down a “peg or two”..  Colie then applies the same “he’s not good enough to me” to a run-away boy but is confronted by the two woman illustrating that is exactly what she was experiencing from others.  There is an interesting metaphor associated with the storyline, how the eclipse of the moon is occurring soon, just at the time Colie has her epiphany about moving beyond the school bullies.  This is a quick read and has a string message for the awkward growing up timeframe for a teenager.  Seems a bit dated to impact a 15 year-old, but hey, maybe 15 year-old girls might really listen to the message.  I’m not sure I would recommend this to someone at that age range, but drama is drama, right?  Not my favorite “coming of age story” I have read, but I wouldn’t nix completely.  As they say, there is something for everyone in a book.