The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova

What a thoroughly enjoyable novel.

I typically stick to mysteries revolving around a type of crime that has been committed (i.e. a murder, disappearance, etc.). Even the “cozy” mysteries I choose to read follow the same premise as a non-cozy mystery that I tend to gravitate toward.

Despite not having any crime (well, one possible crime) central to the storyline, this book captured my attention and had me picking it up in any spare moment I could find.

In The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova, we follow a (sort of) dual storyline. I use the caviat “sort of” because many of the characters overlap in each time period. The reader is first introduced to Imelda Burova in 1972 as we follow her entrance into taking over the family business of fortune telling. Next, we meet Billie, written on the present day timeline, who has just learned after the passing of both of her parents that she is adopted. She begins her investigation into discovering her true parentage after receiving an intriguing note from none other than Madame Burova.

The majority of the characters discussed during Madame Burova’s timeline (the 1970s) are also present in Billie’s timeline (simply denoted as “present day”), which helped in learning/remembering who’s who, as there are A LOT of names to keep straight right off the bat. Billie is a likeable character, as is Madame Burova, and all of the peripheral characters felt real, each one given their own faults and hardships.

There were a few characters I wish were developed more as their own individual characters, but I do recognize that the way the story was written was to give us an almost-first-person point of view. In other words, we as the reader only learned more about any side characters as Imelda or Billie learned something about the side characters.

The story line was engaging and kept me guessing until there were actually no other options left. I think I beat the book by a whole page by figuring out who her mother was before Hogan told the reader (not my best detective work).

The end of the book leaves the reader feeling satisfied and uplifted. All in all, a fun, entertaining read.

I will definitely be picking up more of Hogan’s work in the future.

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