Pack Up the Moon By Rachael Herron

Mandy

I love RH's Cypress Hollow books, but as another reviewer has said, it's important to know what you're getting into with this book--it's not one.

It's not directly uplifting. But that is because the characters are so complex, so real, and so raw, that it's hard to get warm fuzzies when some of the decisions they make are just plain bad ones. And still you root them on, and you hope for the best outcome, because in the end that's what they deserve.

Ms. Herron's writing, as always, is stellar. She truly has pushed herself to the next level with the story, though, and it has far more depth of feeling than any of the CH series could hope for. She has proven herself to be a Writer with this novel, on par with any of the Scottoline, Picoult, or Addison Allens of the world. I truly hope to see this become a bestseller, because frankly, it deserves to be taken as seriously as such.

Buy this book and read it now. Really. It is one of those engrossing, all-encompassing stories that you will refuse to put down.

Larissa Brown

How can I begin to describe the magic of PACK UP THE MOON?

When I try to review it, it sounds dark, and what I want to convey is really its amazing lightness - a balance that Rachael Herron has managed deftly. She manages to put her characters through the hardest tests, and yet comes out with a book that is hopeful and full of love. It’s an honest book, not sugar coated. It looks at how much secrets weigh. It plumbs the mystery of where hope comes from, even amidst enormous loss.

Rachael’s characters capture your heart slowly, quietly, until before you know it, you love them. You're willing to follow them, even as they head into the darkest corners of heartbreak. And you cheer for them when they find even the most fragile beauty and connection.

More spoiler-ish:

This book quietly transforms from what you think it will be – a story of a mother’s loss, in terms of what she willfully gives away as well as what is taken from her – to something entirely different. It becomes a story about the people around her, and about trust, betrayal and many other hard but wonderful things.

My heart went completely to one of the main characters, who was not our POV character – the dad in the story. I felt a kind of tenderness toward Nolan that the author created without sentimentality. Without spoiling things, I’ll say that he’s a person who’s gone so low, he finds a kind of lightness at the bottom, which many of us can identify with. His character will make you consider your own courage, in a great way, that leaves you feeling like you’re not alone in this world.

Lauren

I received a free copy of this book from a Goodreads, First Reads giveaway in exchange for an unbiased opinion.

Pack Up the Moon is the first of Rachael Herron's books I've read and was well written. However, as much as I really liked the storyline to this novel, I was very distracted by the excessive use of foul language throughout the book. While I understand that it may sometimes be warranted for characterization, the sheer volume of it was such that I continuously became frustrated during the read. For this reason, I don't feel as if it's one I'd be able to recommend to others. This is unfortunate as it really is a great story otherwise.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Pamela

Boring.

Elaine Nickolan

This book starts out a little slow but the story, told in alternating past and present, proceeds at a decent pace. What would a loving parent do if they were faced with their child dying? How long could you watch them suffer and know there was no hope, things would only get worse for them? What happens to the parents relationship if one does the "unthinkable"
On top of this situation, the past comes forward with an unbelievable curve. There is another child, given up for adoption many years ago. It is all coming together and makes for a memorable story.
I must admit, at the end of the book I did have a few moments where I had to stop reading until my tears cleared, but then I am a super softy.

ALPHAreader

Pree has just found her birth mother, 22 years after she was given up for adoption.

Discovering her mother is Kate Monroe, celebrated artist and one character in a three-year-old landmark criminal case, is both a shock and no surprise at all. Pree herself is an artist, even though she doesn’t work on canvas like Kate, but prefers street tagging and her current job for a computer games company. Pree also has synaesthesia, associating people’s voices with colour – and Kate’s is all red: for passion and anger.

Kate hasn’t allowed herself to think about the baby girl she gave up for adoption when she was 16. But now, here she is. Three years after losing her baby boy, Robin, in the worst possible way, Kate’s biggest secret has just floated back into her life … and she couldn’t be more terrified, or thankful.

Nolan Monroe spent three years in jail for killing his sick son. Three years since and now he’s working on a road crew, receiving emails from parents in similar situations to what he and Kate were in with Robin. And he thinks about her, his ex-wife, all the time.

‘Pack up the Moon’ is the new stand-alone novel from American author Rachael Herron.

The title comes from the W. H. Auden poem ‘Stop all the clocks.’

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; 
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; 
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. 
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

And it’s a fitting reference in this book about the aftermath of loss and tragedy, and how those two things are not always the same.

We begin the book with Pree meeting Kate for the first time. She’s 22 now, and it’s partly due to recent shocking discoveries in her own life that Pree has tried, yet again, to see if her closed adoption status had changed. It has, and that’s due to the recent tragedies in Kate’s life – the death of her sick son at the hands of his father, Kate’s childhood sweetheart, Nolan. As readers, we’re hit with a lot of emotional upheavals within the first few chapters of Herron’s book. The death of Kate’s son, Robin, Pree’s brother who she was only able to learn about because of his death… we also meet Nolan, Kate’s ex who was once a lawyer, now disbarred and working for a road crew since serving three years of a suspended sentence for killing their son. Herron has laid a tangled web indeed – but she writes these huge tragedies with such tenderness and gentle exploration that they never tumble into melodrama.

The novel begins in May 2014 with Kate and Pree meeting, which triggers Kate having to reach out to Nolan for more than just their casual email correspondence (of which, they are only allowed to share memories of Robin). But the novel also dips back to 16-year-old Kate meeting Nolan for the first time, falling deeply in love with him and being crushed by his moving away. Eventually the novel also curves back to the worst days of Robin’s illness, battling Hodgkin lymphoma and the way Kate and Nolan supported one another so much in the midst of their slowly crumbling world. Told in third person, we also following these three character’s journeys – Pree, Kate and Nolan – as they crash into one another, move each other.

But while Kate and Nolan’s journey is laid out, insofar as we can see the rocky path ahead of them in this book, Pree’s is much less clear and therefore not as compelling. By rights, Pree meeting her birth-mother and learning of the tragedy that has befallen the family that was unbeknownst to her should be interesting enough – but Herron has also heaped Pree with an unwanted pregnancy to sweet, artistic boyfriend Flynn while she’s lusting after her boss. This didn’t work for me – it was too on-the-nose as a catalyst for Pree wanting to find Kate, and I didn’t feel like she needed more than the curiosity that can nag at adopted children. Both Flynn and Pree’s boss had such fleeting appearances in the book that the stakes for her were never fleshed out enough – making her entire pregnancy/romance storyline feel half-cooked. What really worked, and all Pree needed, was the story about finding her family only to have lost half of them before she even knew it;

“I can’t help thinking that if I had a twelve-year-old brother I’d take him to the batting cage or to the arcade or something. Just to forget about it for a minute. Because I never forget about it. Not even for a minute.” She brushed an ant from the back her hand. “I wish I’d gotten to meet you, brother.” The word felt bittersweet in her mouth, round and heavy with something that could have been.

‘Pack up the Moon’ is a very different book for Rachael Herron. I’ve previously enjoyed her ‘Cypress Hollow’ romance novels, but she certainly seems well suited into this more serious story exploration. At the back of the book is a Q&A with Herron, in which she reveals part of her inspiration to write this was her job as a 911-phone operator.

The book will remind some of Jodi Picoult – for the moral conundrums at the heart of the story and this family’s life. The comparison isn’t a bad one (I’m a huge Picoult fan!) but if this had been one of her books, you can bet we’d have seen the court case unfold and subsequent media saga Kate and Nolan suffered through after Robin’s death – and there’s a part of me that wouldn’t have minded seeing that. We certainly come into this story at a seeming lull in events (though, as everyone knows, there are no dips and lulls in grief, not really). But it is interesting to read a book set in the aftermath of so much heartache, especially when Herron explores it so tenderly through these characters and their tangled lives;

“Of course not. He wasn’t perfect at all. He farted in front of my mother on purpose and he snuck lizards he caught outside and put them into the basket where I kept coffee filters just so I’d freak out. Once he told me my ass was fat in front of his first-grade teacher. And, yes, he used the word ‘ass.’ But no matter what, he was perfect.” Kate smiled. “You two have that in common.”
Pree snorted, but Kate saw delight in her eyes, and something similar danced within her.

‘Pack up the Moon’ is a wonderful stand-alone novel from Rachael Herron. I hope she writes more of the like, with moral conundrums at their heart, because I think she’s an interesting voice in women’s fiction.

3.5/5

Gayle

Full review here:
http://everydayiwritethebookblog.com/...

Rachael Herron’s Pack Up The Moon is about parenthood, secrets and grief, and the many permutations that each can take in a lifetime.

Kate and Nolan were high school sweethearts whose rosy future abruptly ended with Nolan’s family moved away senior year. Unbeknownst to Nolan, Kate was pregnant when he moved. She never told him, and instead put her infant daughter up for adoption. The baby was adopted by a lesbian couple, who named her Pree.

Twenty two years later, Pree tracks down Kate. In the intervening years, Kate and Nolan reunited and eventually married. They had a son, Robin, who developed cancer at the age of 8. Despite intensive treatments, Robin’s cancer proved fatal, and while he was in the end stages of the disease, Nolan hastened his death by running the car in the garage while they were both in it. Nolan survived, Robin died.

When the book opens, Pree has just found Kate, and Nolan and Kate, now divorced, haven’t been in contact for years other than the occasional email sharing memories of Robin. Nolan has served time in jail for euthanizing his son. Pack Up The Moon explores Kate and Nolan’s guilt – toward each other, toward their children – as well as the secrets they kept from each other over the years, including Kate’s not telling Nolan about Pree, and Nolan remaining silent about what happened the day that Robin died. Pree, meanwhile, has secrets of her own that have propelled her to find Kate and establish a relationship with her.

Pack Up The Moon sounds like a very depressing book, and the passages about Robin and his death are certainly very, very sad. But this wasn’t a depressing read. I liked the characters, who were quirky and different. Nolan was pretty interesting to me – a former lawyer now working on a street cleanup crew, the only job he could find after serving jail time for mercy killing his son. Pree is a video game designer and into street art stickers, a subculture that I knew nothing about. Kate was a pretty complicated character too – she seemed rather straightforward at the beginning of the book, but the end reveals many complexities and surprises within.

Some of the book felt unrealistic to me, in particular a scene at the end that took place on a boat, when Kate and Nolan have gathered to spread Robin’s ashes into the San Francisco Bay and Kate has (inexplicably) invited Pree to join. I found the passages describing the interplay between the characters the most convincing and interesting. These flawed but human characters were thrust into rather extraordinary circumstances, and I thought Herron did a good job of trying to predict how they might react. She was also generous in her depiction of the various ways we experience grief. Nolan, for example, found solace at his son’s grave (despite his role in Robin’s death), while Kate couldn’t bring herself to visit it. Kate’s grief about her mother’s death was very different from that about her son’s, while her own mother reacted in different ways to Kate’s giving away a baby at 16 and her losing a son in her 30s.

Pack Up The Moon wasn’t perfect, but it was an interesting read with some characters that have stayed with me in the days since I closed the book.

Belinda

At her first art exhibition since the death of her son, Kate Monroe meets a young girl - her adopted daughter, who she gave up 22 years ago that day. Her daughter, Pree, has issues of her own. She is pregnant to a man she loves but has feelings for her married boss. There's also Nolan, Kate's ex-husband, who may or may not have been responsible for the death of their son.

I don't think there's an experienced romance book reader out there who couldn't plot what happens in the rest of this book. That said, for what it is, in most part this book succeeds - it's well written, there's a suitable amount of angst and drama and the resolution is satisfying and complete. However, amidst all the gentle romance-novel stylings there were these really random moments of explicit language. For example (WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AHEAD):

Kate: My baby is dead I can't use colour anymore I am so sad angst angst drama he was just the kind of fuck I needed oh my dead son's room sad sad
Pree: What should I do I'm pregnant but I'm so young oh my boss is so cute he put his fingers in my pussy hard and I came oh my lovely sweet creative boyfriend and angsty feelings about motherhood I wish I knew what to do I wish my boss would take me into an alley and fuck me hard against a wall

Seriously, WTF? I have no problem with explicit language but it was so out of place of the rest of the novel. More specifically, it didn't serve the narrative but did disrupt the flow of the book and jar the reader out of the story. Therefore, it shouldn't be there.

Heather

Pack up the Moon is the most recent foray into human emotion by author Rachael Herron. She has, yet again, written masterfully about love, loss, and healing.

This book follows the lives of Kate Monroe and her family in the aftermath of a traumatic loss. Rachael has said that as a 911 dispatcher she often wonders what happens to families after they call, how they deal with the death of a beloved family member. This book examines exactly that sort of situation.

I won’t post spoilers, but I will say that this book grabs you right in the gut and pulls you along for a roller coaster journey. Your heart will break as you learn what happened and watch how each of the characters try to live life after their hearts are completely shattered. But the redemptive power of love and forgiveness will also stitch your broken heart back together.

The reason I’m a fan of Rachael’s work is because of what she does best – she writes real, flawed, complex characters that you alternately identify with and want to holler at. People don’t fit into neat categories; they are dynamic, and Rachael triumphs at writing them. I loved Nolan and I ached for him through much of the story … and he was a convicted felon. Rachael’s characters come to life on the pages and stay with you long after you finish the book.

This is a must read book and I give it my highest recommendation.

Bobbie Phlieger

I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway, and was actually excited to start reading it. I had never read any of Rachael Herron's books before, but the title and the storyline seemed to catch my eye as a good read. I was not disappointed! I truly loved this book from beginning to end. What I loved about it most was that part of it I could relate to. It's a story of choices and mistakes, love, and loss, but also one of a new found hope and the rebuilding of a bond between a child and parent that was long overdue. This story is so down to earth. It's one that many people can appreciate, having been in similar situations with the loss of one child but still having one somewhere out there. I've come to realize over the years that in relationships, mistakes are inevitable, but it's how you deal with them that is important. Herron's story is a prime example of how there is always hope with second chances!

Deborah

Loved this book and looking forward to reading more from this author.

Catriona Turner

Kate is an artist trying to move on with her life, following a terrible tragedy which destroyed her family. When the daughter she gave up for adoption 22 years previously walks into her life, she is forced to come to terms with the secrets of the past, along with her own darkest demons, and will find out whether there can be a real future after heartache.

Although this story centres around tragic events, they are in the past, and I didn't find this a particularly harrowing read. There are many moving scenes, which for sure will resonate deeply for a lot of readers, but on the whole it's a gentle, thoughtful read.

The most appealing aspect of the story is the endearing and convincing characters. Their flaws are authentic yet forgivable; their strengths unique and finely-observed. I was immersed in their emotional journeys, and thoroughly rooting for the broken relationships to be fixed.

There are several memorable set-pieces which will remain with me for a long time, thanks to Herron's keen eye for detail, and her ability to create moments full of tension and emotion from everyday experiences.

The structure of the novel is highly effective: day by day, events unfold over the course of just a couple of weeks. Meanwhile we're taken back in time to Kate and Nolan's early romance and the circumstances around the adoption. I don't read romance as a rule so I was surprised by how engaged I was by the story of young love.

Although the themes are timeless, it's a very modern story: while both Kate and her daughter are artists, Pree's art is on the street and in video games, and her adopted background brings welcome diversity, with more adorable characters.

I loved the thoughtfulness and truth of this novel. Highly recommended to any reader who likes emotional fiction with truthful relationships and hope at its heart.

ALPHAreader

Pree has just found her birth mother, 22 years after she was given up for adoption.

Discovering her mother is Kate Monroe, celebrated artist and one character in a three-year-old landmark criminal case, is both a shock and no surprise at all. Pree herself is an artist, even though she doesn’t work on canvas like Kate, but prefers street tagging and her current job for a computer games company. Pree also has synaesthesia, associating people’s voices with colour – and Kate’s is all red: for passion and anger.

Kate hasn’t allowed herself to think about the baby girl she gave up for adoption when she was 16. But now, here she is. Three years after losing her baby boy, Robin, in the worst possible way, Kate’s biggest secret has just floated back into her life … and she couldn’t be more terrified, or thankful.

Nolan Monroe spent three years in jail for killing his sick son. Three years since and now he’s working on a road crew, receiving emails from parents in similar situations to what he and Kate were in with Robin. And he thinks about her, his ex-wife, all the time.

‘Pack up the Moon’ is the new stand-alone novel from American author Rachael Herron.

The title comes from the W. H. Auden poem ‘Stop all the clocks.’

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; 
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; 
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. 
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

And it’s a fitting reference in this book about the aftermath of loss and tragedy, and how those two things are not always the same.

We begin the book with Pree meeting Kate for the first time. She’s 22 now, and it’s partly due to recent shocking discoveries in her own life that Pree has tried, yet again, to see if her closed adoption status had changed. It has, and that’s due to the recent tragedies in Kate’s life – the death of her sick son at the hands of his father, Kate’s childhood sweetheart, Nolan. As readers, we’re hit with a lot of emotional upheavals within the first few chapters of Herron’s book. The death of Kate’s son, Robin, Pree’s brother who she was only able to learn about because of his death… we also meet Nolan, Kate’s ex who was once a lawyer, now disbarred and working for a road crew since serving three years of a suspended sentence for killing their son. Herron has laid a tangled web indeed – but she writes these huge tragedies with such tenderness and gentle exploration that they never tumble into melodrama.

The novel begins in May 2014 with Kate and Pree meeting, which triggers Kate having to reach out to Nolan for more than just their casual email correspondence (of which, they are only allowed to share memories of Robin). But the novel also dips back to 16-year-old Kate meeting Nolan for the first time, falling deeply in love with him and being crushed by his moving away. Eventually the novel also curves back to the worst days of Robin’s illness, battling Hodgkin lymphoma and the way Kate and Nolan supported one another so much in the midst of their slowly crumbling world. Told in third person, we also following these three character’s journeys – Pree, Kate and Nolan – as they crash into one another, move each other.

But while Kate and Nolan’s journey is laid out, insofar as we can see the rocky path ahead of them in this book, Pree’s is much less clear and therefore not as compelling. By rights, Pree meeting her birth-mother and learning of the tragedy that has befallen the family that was unbeknownst to her should be interesting enough – but Herron has also heaped Pree with an unwanted pregnancy to sweet, artistic boyfriend Flynn while she’s lusting after her boss. This didn’t work for me – it was too on-the-nose as a catalyst for Pree wanting to find Kate, and I didn’t feel like she needed more than the curiosity that can nag at adopted children. Both Flynn and Pree’s boss had such fleeting appearances in the book that the stakes for her were never fleshed out enough – making her entire pregnancy/romance storyline feel half-cooked. What really worked, and all Pree needed, was the story about finding her family only to have lost half of them before she even knew it;

“I can’t help thinking that if I had a twelve-year-old brother I’d take him to the batting cage or to the arcade or something. Just to forget about it for a minute. Because I never forget about it. Not even for a minute.” She brushed an ant from the back her hand. “I wish I’d gotten to meet you, brother.” The word felt bittersweet in her mouth, round and heavy with something that could have been.

‘Pack up the Moon’ is a very different book for Rachael Herron. I’ve previously enjoyed her ‘Cypress Hollow’ romance novels, but she certainly seems well suited into this more serious story exploration. At the back of the book is a Q&A with Herron, in which she reveals part of her inspiration to write this was her job as a 911-phone operator.

The book will remind some of Jodi Picoult – for the moral conundrums at the heart of the story and this family’s life. The comparison isn’t a bad one (I’m a huge Picoult fan!) but if this had been one of her books, you can bet we’d have seen the court case unfold and subsequent media saga Kate and Nolan suffered through after Robin’s death – and there’s a part of me that wouldn’t have minded seeing that. We certainly come into this story at a seeming lull in events (though, as everyone knows, there are no dips and lulls in grief, not really). But it is interesting to read a book set in the aftermath of so much heartache, especially when Herron explores it so tenderly through these characters and their tangled lives;

“Of course not. He wasn’t perfect at all. He farted in front of my mother on purpose and he snuck lizards he caught outside and put them into the basket where I kept coffee filters just so I’d freak out. Once he told me my ass was fat in front of his first-grade teacher. And, yes, he used the word ‘ass.’ But no matter what, he was perfect.” Kate smiled. “You two have that in common.”
Pree snorted, but Kate saw delight in her eyes, and something similar danced within her.

‘Pack up the Moon’ is a wonderful stand-alone novel from Rachael Herron. I hope she writes more of the like, with moral conundrums at their heart, because I think she’s an interesting voice in women’s fiction.

3.5/5

Joyce

I would rate this novel 3.5 stars. This is the first novel by Rachael Herron that I have read. Although the storyline was great and the writing was well done, I have given it only 3.5 stars because of the amount of profanity in it. Without the profanity, I would probably have rated it 5 stars.
The story revolves around Kate, an artist, who gave up a baby when she was 16 and has lost a son 3 years ago who was terminally ill, Nolan, her ex-husband who is the love of her life and has just spent in time in prison in connection with their son's death, and Pree, a young woman who has just found her birth mother, Kate. The drama between these 3 people is very intense and their emotions are portrayed vividly by the author.

Diane

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this book up. I went thru so many emotions when I read this book. I can’t imagine what the characters went thru in this book. The heartbreak, the loss, the lies and the renewed love and family . This is the 1st book I read of Rachael Herron and I will definitely read more of her work .

Hilary Wiltshire

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I wanted to like the complex characters, the plot, all of it. I just couldn’t. I kept waiting for it to get “good”- not in the “everything comes together neatly in the end” way, but in a way that was satisfying and that made the story compelling. Unfortunately, for me, that moment never came.

Tippy

I picked this book up and put it down so many times. It was one of the hardest books to get through. Not one character was likeable and the storyline was just unexciting. There were times I wanted to scream "Just tell the truth, already!" There was just a series of bad choices by all throughout the book and then the ending was just flat. Ugh! But I finished it and now will donate to Goodwill.

Bonnie

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, however I feel like the ending sort of left the reader hanging as to what happens next for the characters, like a season finale of a television show... Thus my four stars instead of five. I guess we use our imagination to determine the outcome of their relationship together, and other important characters.

Cindy

Though I rated up from a 3.5, there was a lot to like in this story. Kate and Nolan were easy to warm up to. Sweet Robin, I wanted more of to feel the pain. Loved Pree’s mothers and liked Pree. The truth along with more truths that were spilled at the end of the book should have elicited more feelings.

Heather Moree

I had a hard time understanding this book. It is written in time diary’s and the mom’s point of view. I understand that Kate is Pree’s biological mom and that Pree’s adoptive parents are gay. It is confusing as I’ll get out of it.

Reggie Virus

This was good and I liked it, but I kinda lost interest sort of when they kept alluding to the son and him being sick, and then with the daughter and her boyfriend. But when I finally was told why Robin was so sick it got my attention back more. I cried at the end.

Jocina

Such poignant writing, this book just breaks my heart.

Samantha Ng

Boring book with character and storyline that is very slow. Only survived the first few chapters.

Lissa.schiekgmail.com

Powerful emotion

My first fiction by R Herron. I love her in her podcast and non fiction persona. I enjoyed this well written but unlikely story.

Title	:	Pack Up the Moon
Author	:	Rachael Herron
Rating	:
ISBN	:	0451468600
ISBN-10	:	9780451468604
Format Type	:	Paperback
Number of Pages	:	384
Publication	:	First published March 3, 2014

Pack Up the Moon by Rachael Herron

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