Serious Moonlight - Jenn Bennett

Title: Serious Moonlight
Author: Jenn Bennett
Rating: 3/5

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK Children's for letting me receive a digital copy of this book before its official release date.

Raised in isolation and home-schooled by her strict grandparents, the only experience Birdie has had of the outside world is through her favourite crime books.

But everything changes when she takes a summer job working the night shift at a historic Seattle hotel. There she meets Daniel Aoki, the hotel’s charismatic driver, and together they stumble upon a real-life mystery: a famous reclusive writer—never before seen in public—is secretly meeting someone at the hotel.

To uncover the writer’s puzzling identity, Birdie must come out of her shell, and in doing so, realize that the most confounding mystery of all may just be her growing feelings for Daniel.

Truth be told, it took me months to finally finish Serious Moonlight. I could blame my phone's battery, but that would only be partly true. See, I considered reading novels by Jenn Bennett before, but something about the storylines always felt odd to me. And because her stories become more popular, it had me suspicious. It was actually the cover for Serious Moonlight that had me hooked. And then I wanted to dive in, but then the beginning of the book was pretty boring, which I already feared it would be.

Big surprise, my mind couldn't help but compare bits - compare the main character Birdie - to Agatha Christie. And I've had a hard time with the only book I read by her, too. The cover of Serious Moonlight mislead me. There was a certain vibe I expected of it. And I got disappointed. I was annoyed by the detective behaviour, annoyed by the case Birdie tried so solve.

So I put this one aside - lots of times. I didn't want to know how things would turn out between her and Daniel. Though their encounter (happening before the book picks up) is an extraordinary one. I liked that idea, but I still wish the author would have made more of that - so many possibilites gone to waste. Instead, Birdie is naive, they talk about the issue a hundred times without coming to a real conclusion, without moving forward just the tiniest bit. And sometimes it's all a very wild chaos. That might be because of Birdie's crazy aunt Mona. I really liked her as a character. She always knew what to say and never crossed a line despite her crazy self. However, her own story was predictable and I wished for something else. To me, that wasn't very creative.

About 30% in, Serious Moonlight grew on me. I didn't expect that, but was glad for it. It picked up some pace, the scenes and settings were good and the idea of the plot seemed more figured out and thought-through. Not as messy anymore.

Sadly, I'm not sure whether I will give another Jenn Bennett book a chance since this one took me forever to finish. Her writing style was good, but sometimes it seemed like she just wanted to use some fetch English words, making the sentences themself sound great, but had the reader thinking if there wasn't an easier way to express herself and explain situations. Considering I liked the book during the middle, I still give it a "good" rating.