Between Us & the Moon

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Author(s)

Rebecca Maizel

Publisher

Harper Teen

Genre(s)

Contemporary Romance

Age Range

12+

Release Date

June 30, 2015

ISBN

978-0062327611

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A luminous YA love story that evokes Judy Blume's Forever for a new generation. Sarah—Bean to her friends and family—is an aspiring astronomer and champion mathlete. She lives behind her beloved telescope, with her head in the stars and her feet planted firmly on the ground. For as long as she can remember, she's also lived in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Scarlett. But after a traumatic end to the school year, Sarah goes to Cape Cod for the summer with her family, determined to grow up. It's there that she meets gorgeous, older college boy Andrew. He sees her as the girl she wants to be. A girl like Scarlett. He thinks she's older, too—and she doesn't correct him. For Sarah, it's a summer of firsts. Before she knows what's happened, one little lie has transformed into something real. And by the end of August, she might have to choose between falling in love, and finding herself. Fans of Jenny Han and Stephanie Perkins are destined to fall for this romantic and heartfelt coming-of-age novel about how life and love are impossible to predict.

Editor reviews

2 reviews

Project Scarlett

December 19, 2015

Overall rating

3.0

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I have officially decided that I condemn lying, cheating, and etc. to potential love interest and friends unless it is a white lie. From the very lie that comes out of Sarah's mouth, I'm wishing for a good old dose of lobotomy. Why? Because lies create such a huge disaster. And oh, boy. Sarah's lies are a walking, talking, and growing disaster.

YA Contemporary/Romance, BETWEEN US AND THE MOON tells the story of Sarah trying to be someone she is not. Specifically, her sister. She wants to be popular, fawned over, and amazing. This story isn't about romance (well, it's not the main plot, at least). Sarah's character arc remains to be the most important thing about the story, and that is definitely what is critical for this book to work. And does it work? Well, I feel like the arc could make much more of an emotional impact on the readers, but it does well in certain parts.

Sarah is that girl. She is the shy one to her sister's glamour queen. She is the smart one, and she is tracking a comet for her science project/scholarship. She starts creating a project called the Scarlett Project, and though it starts off as an innocent project, it turns into a heaping pile of lies, lies, and more lies. This is the first time Sarah has done something big, and she does indeed make fireworks out of her project and her experimenting. Because she has never lied before, she doesn't know the huge consequences. And the story explores that "lie, tell a bigger lie, and then tell a much bigger lie" cycle to the inevitable downfall she has at the end of the book.

Disaster. The plot ends up in a huge disaster. A good, entertaining, sensible disaster that proves to be relationship-wrecking for Sarah. The final yet also open ending proves to be very realistic, and I'm not going to tell any of you what happens.

Overall, BETWEEN US AND THE MOON has an excellent title. I mean, is there any greater wording than that? But anyway, I'm getting off-topic again. Sarah, a young teen, breaks out during her summer break and learns about the world by participating instead of observing. She may fall hard, but she most definitely learns from her conclusions of her project and, more importantly, finds out about herself.

Rating: Three out of Five

Alison Hong, Staff Reviewer and Tumblr Manager Top 50 Reviewer 125 reviews

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User reviews

2 reviews

Overall rating

3.5

Plot

3.5(2)

Characters

3.0(2)

Writing Style

4.0(2)

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A coming-of-age story

August 11, 2015

Overall rating

3.7

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Sarah has always felt like she’s lived in the shadow of Scarlett, her older sister. When her boyfriend breaks up with her right before the family is leaving to go to Cape Cod for the summer, Sarah decides it’s an opportunity for an experiment. She’ll act more like her older sister and see if that attracts friends and boys. This is how she meets college boy Andrew. She finds herself having real feelings for him, feelings that seem to be returned, but he doesn’t know the real her. If she tells him the truth, she’ll lose him. But if she doesn’t, it all might come crashing down anyway at her sister’s going-away party.

I went into this book thinking it would be a cute, lighthearted read that would be perfect for summer. It was still cute and a great book for the summer, but it wasn’t as lighthearted as I expected. There was a lot of depth to it that I found myself both enjoying and appreciating.

I found myself really relating to Sarah. She surrounded herself with science and astronomy the same way I would surround myself with books and baking. Her story arc became more about her discovering who she was as a person than about her experiment. She made mistakes, sometimes big ones, and she would have to learn from them and accept them. I loved how scientific she was about the experiment. It really suited her.

I did find the love story part of the book hard to get behind. It was cute and I thought they did work well together, but it was based on a lie and I knew something would likely happen. Either he would find out, she would confess, someone would use it against her, so many options for some drama. He knew her only from the persona she was pretending to be, even if that persona was slowly turning out to be the real Sarah. If their whole relationship hadn’t started on lies, I probably would have gotten into them more than I did.

The coming-of-age arc was my favourite part of the book. Sarah’s experiment may have started because her boyfriend broke up with her and accused her of watching the world instead of living in it, but it turned into a great growth arc that had Sarah stepping out of her sister’s shadow, discovering new things she liked, and making mistakes that caused her to grow as a person. I also loved that her discovering herself didn’t mean she lost her love of astronomy and science.

Overall, I know it started out with Sarah changing who she is because of something a guy said, but it turned out to be the catalyst behind an enjoyable coming-of-age story.

Trista Roddick Top 50 Reviewer 182 reviews

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A summer romance filled with lies and stars.

July 01, 2015 (Updated: July 01, 2015)

Overall rating

3.3

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If I were to pitch Between Us and The Moon is one sentence it would be something like this: A summer romance filled with lies and stars.

Sarah “Bean” Levin, scientist and stargazer, is sick of being in the shadow of her older sister Scarlett. After she’s dumped by her long time best friend turned boyfriend Tucker, she decides that she’s going to start working on The Scarlett Experiment—an attempt to observe how exactly her sister has all the boys wrapped around her finger. Sarah changes her clothes, her attitude, her speech and finds herself Andrew, the sweetest boy in Cape Cod, and finds the romance she wants.

Except there’s one important thing she changes—her age.

I didn’t agree with Sarah’s plan of lying to Andrew about her age. The constant lies and deception, and the absurd lengths she went to in order to keep the truth from coming out were off-putting and while I cheered for her and thought that she was one of the most real characters I’ve read all summer, I knew right away that she had a lot of growing up to do. She was enthusiastic about stars and the periodic table of elements and all things science, but I agreed that she had kind of set aside people and experiences and adventures and preferred to lock herself up all day to study or research. She was a follower, also, but we can’t possibly expect every person to be a natural born leader. What was more important to me, was that Sarah learnt from her mistakes and became a better person from them. Sarah was kind and trusting and of course, her summer love with Andrew was what I loved so, so much because I want me one of those

Good Points

The main character's love interest Andrew was so, so swoony!