Review: So Far Away by Meg Mitchell Moore

So Far Away by Meg Mitchell Moore 

Publisher: Little Brown and Co. 

Pages: 336 

Format: ARC 

Buy the Book: Amazon 

Goodreads:  Thirteen-year-old Natalie Gallagher is trying to escape: from her parents' ugly divorce, and from the vicious cyber-bullying of her former best friend. She discovers a dusty old diary in her family's basement and is inspired to unlock its secrets.

Kathleen Lynch, an archivist at the Massachusetts State Archives, has her own painful secrets: she's a widow estranged from her only daughter. Natalie's research brings her to Kathleen, who in Natalie sees traces of the daughter she has lost.

What could the life of an Irish immigrant domestic servant from the 1920s teach them both? In the pages of the diary, they will learn that their fears and frustrations are timeless.





Kritters Thoughts:  An interesting and new way to approach cyber bullying.  The hot topic was a part of this novel, but not the sole center, which I appreciated.  Natalie - a high school freshmen and Kathleen - a career woman who has lost both a daughter and a husband are an unlikely pair, but their relationship in this book was perfectly scripted.


Without any chapters, this book was interesting as it switched focus between the characters with strategic spacing.  Because the book switched between characters, the reader was able to get to know each character on their own turf, which made me fall in love with them in their own space.  I loved that Kathleen was given the opportunity to help raise another teenager, it was so fitting that she have a second chance.  At the same moment, I loved how Natalie was given another maternal figure to lean on until her mother was able to pull it together and re-enter her child's life. 


This book showed me once again that it definitely takes a village to raise a child - sometimes parents are inadequate or just not the answer to the problem that a child has, they may just need someone outside of the family to lean on through a difficult time.  A great book that both showed the destruction of family, but the reconstruction of a different kind of family.


Rating: absolutely loved it and want a sequel

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Booksparks PR.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.