The Moment Collector
Author: Jodi Lynn Anderson
Publication Date: August 7th 2014
Publisher: Orchard Books
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~
A haunting mystery, romance in the vein of The Lovely Bones by New York Times bestselling author.
"The yard of this house is a graveyard of moments and everything left behind is a clue. And I am here to dig."
There's a ghost haunting 208 Water Street. She doesn't know who she was, or why she's still here. She does know that she is drawn to Maggie, the new girl in town, and her friends - beautiful, carefree Pauline and Liam, the boy who loves her.
But the ghost isn't all that's lurking in Gill Creek... Someone is killing young girls all across the county. Can the ghost keep these three friends safe? Or does she have another purpose?
You know those moments when a book completely stuns
you? Makes
you angry, and makes you cry simultaneously. The type that you didn't
know it got under your skin until this moment when something bad really happens
and it's like you're right there in that book, with that character? Hey, The
Moment Collector.
The Moment Collector is written in the third person and
mainly focuses on Maggie, who's just relocated to Gill Creek after her Mother
lost her job in California, as she learns and grows into a different and better
version of herself whilst she's there. But, we have a few out of character
perspectives of the spirit that resides in Maggie's house, showing parts of the
story at a different angle. The writing is simple and beautiful, and so, so
effective.
I have a love hate
relationship with the characters though. I didn't really like the Maggie in the
beginning, she's a little standoffish and you don't seem to get much from her,
but then I realised, she's just mainly like us. It's like getting an outside
view of yourself from someone else's perspective. Maggie's not a people person,
she's home-schooled, she likes books, she's inside her own head and she's a
planner. But, she starts to grow more open when she meets Pauline and Liam, and
from there things don't exactly go as she planned, some in a good happy way,
and some in a sad way as she gains good friendships, falls in love for the first
time, get's her heart broken for the first time, gets hurt and processing that
hurt and letting it go. I loved that Maggie.
We have our co-characters with Liam and Pauline, and while I
did like Liam, he never pretended to be anything other than who he was, what he
felt. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about Pauline. Not going to lie, I
hated her. Me and Saruuh, had a lovely little conversation about her and
her actions and what she did to Maggie in this one scene (which, I won't spoil
it- but if you've read it, you'll know (the) bracelet). And see what I mean
about it getting under your skin? I didn't think I'd care as much as I did,
because I didn't feel that invested in it for the first half and then suddenly
I just...was. And I felt that pain right along with her, which has only
happened with me for a few selective books and characters.
The two reasons this one isn't perfect for me is because for
that first half it felt a little slow and it took me until then to get into it,
and since the story is short, I thought it would have had a faster pace. The
second reason is because of Pauline, plain and simple.
The Moment Collector is a story that will stick with me for
a while, and in the beginning I didn't really get the reminiscent of The Lovely Bones, but by the end? I
didn't only just get it, I felt it. it's
one of those stories that are not happy go lucky, where things don't work out
the way you or the characters want, it's unfair and lonely and an absolutely
heart-breaking but beautiful journey.
Rating: 4.5/5
