Spotlight: The Measure of the Moon by Lisa Preston

Publisher: Thomas Mercer Publishing
Pages: 336
Received: Received a copy from the publisher through Netgalley

Release Date: May 16, 2017

Goodreads Synopsis:

When eight-year-old Greer Donner falls off his horse in the Washington wilderness, he braces himself to face the long hike home alone. But screams pierce the darkness, and he stumbles upon a dead-end road where a man is beating a woman—nearly to death. In a moment of courage, he stops the assault, but he’s left to face the man, who turns his wrath into an ominous threat: if the boy ever reveals what he has seen, his family will pay the ultimate price. The secret Greer now carries begins his emotional unraveling.

In Seattle, Gillian Trett is a photographer with a troubled marriage and a childhood she’s trying to forget. Domestic tension mounts when her husband’s stepsister arrives. Desperate for a distraction, and a way to advance her career, Gillian throws herself into uncovering the history behind an old man’s Holocaust photo of boys in a forest. The mysterious children and the truth behind the scene haunt her—she can’t let go of the image, or of her own shadowed past.


Then a horrifying revelation entangles Gillian’s path with young Greer’s. The boy and the woman, separated by a generation and a hundred miles, each confront the terrible power of harbored secrets—not only to eclipse the truth but also to illuminate the dark, unknown dimensions of their loved ones and themselves.

My Review:

I was very intrigued with the synopsis of the book, Lisa Preston really tackles how one moment can affect someone. But what really brought everything together was the way she intertwined the different stories and brought these two unlikely characters together. I will say it took me some time to get into the story, I found that there is a lot of time spent on getting the readers to know the different characters, that it took away from the story at first.

I really enjoyed the story of the Donner family, I loved how they are a huge family who all come together and care for each other. Though I will say that it was hard to follow along with which character was which, I felt that everyone in the family all seemed very similar and there were not too many huge character differences. I think this was done to really single out Greer (which was absolutely achieved), since he is the main character going through the difficult time.

The biggest concern I had while reading this book is how long it took to bring these two stories together to meet, everything happens closer to the end of the book and it made it quite difficult to keep reading. I felt disconnected through a lot of the story and felt that the second storyline did not need to be as in depth, that really took away from the main idea of what is happening to Greer and I felt myself wanting more of that family dynamic while I was with the other story.

Lisa Preston keeps you intrigued and on your toes, but I felt like something just missed the mark with this story, and things just felt a tad bit disconnected from one another.