Welcome to one of the May 8th stops on the blog tour for Beyond The Moon by Catherine Taylor, organized by Rachel’s Random Resources. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts & interviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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About the Book
Beyond the Moon
by Catherine Taylor
Print/eBook
Published January 2020
The Cameo Press Ltd
Page Count: 496
Audiobook
Published 18 February 2021
Narrator: Liz May Brice
Length: 13 hours and 18 minutes
Genre: Historical Fiction, Time Travel
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
A strange twist of fate connects a British soldier fighting in the First World War in 1916 with a young woman living in modern-day England a century later, in this haunting literary time travel novel.
Two people, two battles: one against the invading Germans on the battlefields of 1916 France, the other against a substandard, uncaring mental health facility in modern-day England. Part war story, part timeslip, part love story – and at the same time a meditation on the themes of war, mental illness, identity and art, Beyond The Moon is an intelligent, captivating debut novel, perfect for book clubs.
In 1916 1st Lieutenant Robert Lovett is a patient at Coldbrook Hall military hospital in Sussex, England. A gifted artist, he’s been wounded fighting in the Great War. Shell shocked and suffering from hysterical blindness he can no longer see his own face, let alone paint, and life seems increasingly hopeless.
A century later in 2017, medical student Louisa Casson has just lost her beloved grandmother – her only family. Heartbroken, she drowns her sorrows in alcohol on the South Downs cliffs – only to fall accidentally part-way down. Doctors fear she may have attempted suicide, and Louisa finds herself involuntarily admitted to Coldbrook Hall – now a psychiatric hospital, an unfriendly and chaotic place.
Then one day, while secretly exploring the old Victorian hospital’s ruined, abandoned wing, Louisa hears a voice calling for help, and stumbles across a dark, old-fashioned hospital room. Inside, lying on the floor, is a mysterious, sightless young man, who tells her he was hurt at the Battle of the Somme, a WW1 battle a century ago. And that his name is Lieutenant Robert Lovett…
*NB Contains graphic descriptions of war violence and injuries, as well as profanity and mild sex.
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My Review
My Rating: 4 Stars
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I was granted complimentary audiobook access to Beyond the Moon as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Rachel’s Random Resources. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
A WWI British soldier finds himself in hospital with vision loss that doesn’t appear to have a cause. A modern day woman finds herself committed to a mental health unit after being rescued from an accident that was mistaken for a suicide attempt. As she wanders through the hospital trying to plead her case, she happens upon a time portal into the past and visits the WWI soldier. Can they help each other?
Beyond the Moon is a beautifully written story about finding love and learning to heal one’s self in the face of past trauma and present unpleasant circumstances. I absolutely love historical fictions with the sort of fantastical element unintentional time travel introduces, and Beyond the Moon is a great example of a story that does it quite well. Watching these two characters fall in love and grow together, a century apart, was absolutely magical and kept me coming back to the audiobook in anticipation of what would happen next.
I do feel the Robert (WWI soldier) chapters were far more interesting than Louise’s chapters, and I think we’re supposed to be equally interested in Louise. I did sometimes find myself wishing the narrative would hurry up and get back to Robert. That isn’t to say the Louise-only parts weren’t well written. I felt her frustration and sense of injustice so deeply in being involuntarily committed to a ward full of professionals who don’t care and patients of every complaint imaginable all thrown together. I feel that frustration so deeply and I wanted to be able to make it right! I just didn’t connect with everything else Louise was wrestling with nearly as much as I connected with Robert as a character in general.
The narrator’s performance is well done. I had no trouble following whose POV we were in, and listening at my typical 2x speed was easy. I would absolutely be happy to listen to more books narrated by Liz.
I will also absolutely look for more books by this author, Catherine Taylor , in the future, and I recommend it to fans of historical fiction and time travel, especially if you like a touch of romance and a hefty serving of psychology.
About the Author
Catherine Taylor was born and grew up on the island of Guernsey in the British Channel Islands. She is a former journalist, most recently for Dow Jones News and The Wall Street Journal in London. Beyond The Moon is her first novel. She lives in Ealing, London with her husband and two children.
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Narrator Bio Liz May Brice is an English actress. She is known for roles such as the convicted murderer Pat Kerrigan on ITV1’s Bad Girls, and Agent Johnson in Torchwood: Children of Earth.
Giveaway Alert!
Giveaway to Win 5 x Beyond the Moon Audiobook (Open Internationally*)
*Audiobook to be distributed via Authors-Direct. Please check the Authors Direct website to check whether it operates where you are.
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