Review: The Moon Below by Barbara Bickmore

Book: The Moon Below by Barbara Bickmore

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: A-

For: 2008 TBR... which is now over, but still, I can finish the books, right? :)

I started this book in December, then got distracted with Christmas and new Christmas books and the holiday happenings. So this past weekend, I decided to finish it once and for all, and spent most of Sunday reading the whole second half. (It's about a 600 page book.)

This is one of those books I'd never heard of until becoming part of the blogging world. It's not a new book, but not a really old one either. Many people consider it on their all time favorite list, so I decided I needed to check it out.

It's a sweeping epic story covering many years and following one woman's adventurous life as she becomes a part of Australia's beginning. When she is 17, Hallie decides to answer the letter of a man she new when she was a child. He wants her to join him in Australia and become his wife. She takes a leap of faith and heads out from England to start her new life.

Meanwhile, she falls in love with the doctor that saves her life when she has an appendicitis while crossing the ocean. And so the love triangle begins!

Real historical events and people weave themselves in and amongst Hallie's story as we see Australia grow from a few small, grungy port cities, to the thriving country it is today. However, Hallie's story takes place mostly out in the country, on her farm where we live through all the problems she faces from drought, to floods, births and deaths, failures and successes... and of course that ever bothersome love triangle!

Yes, it's quite the soap opera. And I totally enjoyed it, having not read a soap opera-ish book in quite awhile. It reminded me a lot of the recent movie, Australia, only without the war element.

There were a few things that bothered me a bit (just the repetitive writing style mostly) that made me give it the A-.