I love a book with dual timelines so this one was perfect for me, and written so, so well! Set between 1950s and 1970s, we encounter our two main protagonists, Dovie and Ava. For me they were both wonderful narrators and I loved that despite the age difference, they were very similar in character and both very likeable characters.

There’s a little ‘detective’ aspect to this book as Ava tries to figure out who sent the package to her flat and who the intended recipients are. I loved this and it was especially endearing to see it written from the point of view of a teenage girl, someone very determined to not give up in her quest!

As mentioned earlier, this book is perfect for #pagesofpride as part of the main storyline centres around the relationships between Dovie and Gillian. In particular, it focuses on the perception of lesbians during 1950s America and the terrible treatment they suffered. Julie Owen Moylan writes the book beautifully and really shows the heartbreak and bravery these women went through.

This book for me was nothing like I expected but I enjoyed every minute of it and think it’s a brilliant debut novel!

Aside from romance, historical fiction is one of my favourite genres, so this hybrid blend of both was just perfect to me! ⁣
⁣
This book was a beautifully written, often heartbreaking read.⁣
⁣
What did I love about this book?⁣
⁣
🥃 Alternating chapters of Dual Time Lines set in 1955 and 1975 America, in New York City⁣
⁣
🥃 A comprehensive cast of strong, resilient female characters ⁣
⁣
🥃 LGBTQ+ representation ⁣
⁣
🥃 Learning about the heartbreaking way in which LGBTQ+ women were treated and vilified in the 1950’s (and beyond and since) ⁣
⁣
🥃 How the different stories and POV’s in the alternate time lines were beautifully woven together⁣
⁣
🥃 The beautiful portrayal of young love and friendships ⁣
⁣
🥃 The Mental Health representation and the harrowing details of the treatments that patients in Mental Health institutions endured, and only in recent history⁣
⁣
🥃 That this book gripped me from start to finish and I couldn’t wait to pick it up to read the next instalment ⁣
⁣
A big thank you to @michaeljbooks and @julieowenmoylan for including me in the tour of this beautiful book! 💚

An evocative journey to the past, The Green Eyes Girl is an addictive read about love and loss.

In 1955, Dovie and Gillian live as lodgers, protecting their privacy fiercely, until someone guesses the truth..

In 1975, teen Ava is struggling with a mother haunted by something Ava can’t see when she opens a parcel containing a photo with the word LIAR scrawled across the face of a woman. She becomes determined to discover the meaning behind this, and the woman at the heart of it all.

I cannot believe this is a debut novel. I was drawn in from the start, as Moylan effortlessly paints a vivid picture of both 1950s and 1970s New York. The heat, the claustrophobic apartments, the smooth jazz; it all comes together to completely immerse you in the story.

The book is bursting with women who are are bold, complicated and determined, and I found them fascinating. Dovie, a people pleaser who needs people to like her above all else. Gillian, a fierce realist who wants to protect herself at all costs. Ava, an inquisitive and independent teen who had to grow up before her time. Lonely, opportunistic Judith who puts herself above all…

A compelling read that doesn’t shy away from horrors of what could face anyone outside of societal norms in the 1950s, such as members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

A brilliant read and fantastic debut, I just wanted more! I wouldve loved to have heard more of Dovie, and more about Ava’s mother. 400 pages was not enough!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book but I was very intrigued by the cover and the fact that it’s a debut. I’m so glad I went into it blind because I was taken on a crazy ride, full of surprises.

In 1955, schoolteachers Dovie and Gillian are living together in an New York apartment. To the world, they are just roommates but behind closed doors, their love is strong. But when the manipulative Judith lets slip to Dovie that she knows her secret, their lives are plagued by evil schemes and blackmail. In 1975, Ava lives in the same apartment with her mentally ill mother. When a box of photos shows up from Paris, Ava becomes determined to find out who the woman with ‘LIAR’ scrawled across her face is.

On the face of things, our two narrators Dovie and Ava seem to lead very different lives. However, both women are desperate to be loved and house a host of insecurities. I couldn’t help but spot parallels across the 20 year time gap and it was really fun to see how much they had in common.

I was so heartbroken about the treatment of vulnerable, mentally ill patients in this book, especially women. It’s very difficult to read and it felt horrendously true. I had to remind myself that the book wasn’t set centuries ago and that this was all relatively recent. This was just a small part of the intense frustration and anger that I felt throughout the narrative.

Of course, there is plenty of discussion about the experience of two lesbians during the 1950s. The fear and the hopelessness that Dovie felt about simply being who she is and loving who she loves hit me so hard. My heart broke several times and it has been a long time since I hated a character with the amount of passion that I had for Judith. She was completely driven by hate and homophobia and I was so scared that she’d win.

That Green Eyed Girl is a twisty, haunting novel, full of bittersweetness and eye-opening insight into history. Moylan did a great job of thoroughly transporting me into both timelines and I read through it in a heady daze of expert storytelling and raw emotion.

One of the best books of 2022.

Humane, engaging and atmospheric. Absolutely loved it.

The characters are well-rounded and believable.

This book is probably one of my new favorites because it is beautiful and poignant in equal measure. The two timelines are set twenty years apart in the same New York apartment; in 1955 Dovie and Gillian are living their lives in secret because their love is illegal. And in 1975, a teen Ava is trying to comprehend the breakdown of her family and receives a mysterious package full of items that pose more questions than answers.
I loved the parallel of their stories and all three women were written so beautifully that I desperately needed to know their stories. This story bought out so many emotions and felt so powerful and aptly depicted so many difficult moments with poise. I loved it so much, this novel really broke me down at times but I always had hope that these women would find their power.

That Green Eyed Girl is the debut novel from Julie Owen Motown and it didn’t disappoint!

Following a duel timeline centred around apartment 3B in New York, the story follows Ava in 1975 and Dovie in 1955. Each chapter alternates between the two timelines and I thought it worked really well in drawing the reader in and keeping the reader interested.

Both timelines are cleverly linked, by the mysterious parcel which Ava receives. I liked learning about everyone’s lives- Dovie and Gillian’s relationship and the risks they were having to take to be together and I thought Ava was an interesting character too as she deals with her mother’s deteriorating mental health.

The book is very atmospheric and I really felt like I was in 1950’s and 1970’s New York. Teamed with being very character driven and the women feeling ‘real’, this was an engaging debut and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

Thank you to the publisher for inviting me on the blog tour and the advanced copy of the book.

Wonderfully written and touching on a sensitive topic in such a way that it leaves you pondering but also pulls on your heartstrings. I liked the alternating chapters between both timelines as it showed progress in the plot but also kept me reading as I wanted to learn about the events.
Full review on my blog

What a beautiful story. I was hooked from the very beginning learning about Dovie and Gillian and the parallel story running twenty years later with Ava. These women felt so real - their lives,love and deceit felt so authentic and emotional.
The mystery of the parcel addressed to Apartment 3B was a great way to entwine the two timelines and the contents were a little treasure trove of lives lost. Little links between the two timelines were so cleverly woven into the story. Beautifully written and so descriptive this book is one to capture your heart.

A very immersive and emotional read. Following the two timelines and wondering how it would all be linked definitely kept my attention. The characters were well written and I was invested in their stories. I loved being transported to the 2 eras of New York, the settings beautifully described ...

1955 - I felt I could taste the whiskey and smoke from the jazz bars . In their NYC apartment ,Dovie and Gillian were living a secret and taking a big risk by doing so. This story is incredibly eye opening - to think that same sex relationships were illegal in the 50s to the point of arrest or conversion therapy! I wondered how things could possibly turn out for these two...

1975 - Ava is 16 and has a lot of worry with her own mother who was recently admitted to a mental facility. Her father is more preoccupied with his lover and Ava is trying to cope with it all when the mysterious box of mementos arrives in the post.

Ava is determined to find out who the mementos belonged to and I loved following the investigation because I too wanted to know how the stories might be linked.

I'd highly recommend reading this debut. A poignant tale.

This is a brilliantly poignant, emotional, thought provoking read which takes the reader on a moving journey. Told through an alternating timeline and in the same apartment. 1975 and 1955. The timeline works so well and is easy to follow. You can feel the heat of a NYC summer, the smell of tobacco in the 1955 jazz clubs.

1975 and Ava Winters is living with uncertainty about her mum’s mental health which is deteriorating, along with her fathers relationship with a younger woman, Candy Jackson. A box is delivered in the mail from Paris, inside it are an assortment of items, including a photograph with the word LIAR across it. Where has the letter come from? Who is it for?

1955, teacher Dovie Carmichael lives with fellow her teacher Gillian, she invites their nosey neighbour Judith round for dinner which she later regrets, deeply.

The characters are so well drawn Dovie is lovely, as is Ava, Judith though is a completely different matter you just want to slap her. With her manipulative, sly, hateful, treacherous traits. You actually feel the tension build whenever Judith is around. The author manages to capture the difficulties Ava has dealing with her mums deteriorating mental health so well, the treatment she undergoes in 1975 is truly heartbreaking, the loneliness Ava feels, you just want to grab her and hug her tight.

This story has everything, relationships, some hidden ones, friendship, love and loss so sensitively written. Then there’s the mystery of the box received in 1975, gradually things are revealed. Eventually connecting things together from 1955 .

This is a brilliant debut, it is at times painful and sad but as you read you just want to know how things work out in the end. A must read.

I would like to thank #netgalley and #MichaelJoseph for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest, fair and unbiased review.

Oh this story, it’s so beautiful and heart-breaking at the same time. It’s 1975 in New York and Ava’s mother is not acting normal. Ava’s mother hasn’t been normal for some time mentally, and she soon disappears leaving Ava all alone. While Ava worries about her mother she soon comes across a box that’s been sent to her apartment all the way from Paris. The contents of the box are meant for someone else and she soon finds herself wondering about who lived in the apartment before her.

This is such a wonderful and yet heart-breaking story. The book begins in 1975 New York following Ava and we see the problems she has with her mother who has become mentally unstable. The opening line of the book is brilliant: ‘The day the box arrived, my mother thought she was Jesus’. It instantly had me reading this and once I started I found I couldn’t put this book down! The story is split between two tales, one set in 1975 following Ava, and the other set in 1955 following Dovie, a woman who used to live in the same apartment Ava now lives in.

Each chapter alternates between the story of 1975 and 1955 and I love how interesting both tales are from the start. Ava’s story shows her mother becoming worse, disappearing from home and later being taken to a hospital as she seems so lost and unstable. We see the story from fifteen-year-old Ava’s point of view as she sees her mother deteriorate and later has to cope with visiting her while having other problems with her father and his lack care for her. The story set in 1955 is written from Dovie’s point of view as she and Gillian, both teachers at a local school, live happy lives until one day their colleague Judith visits their apartment and discovers the truth about their relationship.

I enjoyed how this story shows us the relationship between Dovie and Gillian in a beautiful way. The two of them love each other and keep their love for each other a secret as it wasn’t acceptable in the 1950s. I have to say that I felt quite emotional reading what happens to them once it seems that their relationship is discovered. Dovie’s story is the one out of the two alternating tales that had me most emotional, how she and Gillian have their lives shattered when the truth about their relationship is discovered.

Ava’s story in 1975 is an interesting one and I like what happens as she and her friend Viola dig deeper into what happened to the women who used to live in Ava’s apartment. I like what we discover later on in the story about some of the characters and Ava’s own personal story is good too. Ava’s tale with her mother being in the hospital is an emotional read. There is also something we discover through this story about certain characters which leaves you feeling quite emotional too. The two tales continue to alternate with each chapter and we discover more and more about both Dovie’s and Ava’s lives. I love what happens in both stories and how things are resolved, especially at the end in Ava’s tale.

The ending is good, albeit a bittersweet one. There are things you discover and a big reveal of what happened to someone near the end. I love how this is resolved and the final chapter set in 1975 New York which gave a hopeful ending to what was otherwise quite a sad story. It felt like a satisfying ending, even though it is quite sad, and this book left me so emotional after reading it. It left me thinking about the horrible lives many women faced in the past, due to who they were and how horribly society treated some of them for just being themselves. The realities of what could happen are shown in this story and it does leave you feeling for these characters as they are going through so much.

Overall this is such a good book, the writing kept me engaged throughout, and I couldn’t stop reading, reading almost the entire book in one day, it’s that good! Ava’s and Dovie’s stories are both so interesting and heart-breaking and I loved reading what happened to both characters and where they end up. I love how the two separate stories cross over and it’s such a beautiful and yet emotional read, and a bit of a bitter sweet ending, as some have said. You wish there could have been a better ending, and yet enough is resolved that you feel satisfied reading it. There’s just the occasional use of the f swear word and mentions of what happens to some women who were treated badly at the time for being gay which is quite sad and honestly disturbing (I didn’t know that was what happened). It’s definitely an emotional read, but a satisfying one too, and this book will stay with me for a long time.

Oh my god, this book broke me, put me back together and then broke me again.

That Green Eyed Girl was such a heartbreaking but beautiful read that I think everyone should read.

I'm.a huge fan of dual timelines and Julie Owen Moylan did not disappoint with this one. It flowed beautifully and I felt myself becoming emotionally attached to these characters, except Judith, if you know you know.

I have not stopped thinking about this book. It deals with so many topics and just nails everything on the head. The fact that this is a debut novel blows my mind. I will definitely be picking up Moylan's books in the future.

Go read this book. Yes, it's an incredibly sad story that tugs at your heartstrings but it is such a poignant and thought-provoking book that everyone needs to experience.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Will post links later as I am taking part in the book tour!)

Thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph and NetGalley for ARC.
This review is a little delayed because I thought I'd written it and posted it months ago. Perhaps I dreamed it?

This evocative, thought-provoking book uses the premise of the people living in the same apartment in New York City in 1955 and 1975 to explore family, queer identity, love and loss.

1975: Ava is worried about her other, who has just been admitted to a mental health institution despite Ava's best efforts to look after. The opener was a sucker punch for me as it seemed to capture the universal in the particular.
After a mysterious parcel arrives in the post, Ava and her best pal start to investigate the building and its inhabitants, and the story of Dovie and Gillian begins to unfold. Lodgers who are closeted for fear of reprisals, ostracism and imprisonment in 1955, and the eventual courses of their lives.
This weaves the timelines beautifully and the prose is mesmerising. There is the odd niggle of coincidence, but overall a book that will linger in your mind.

Incredible..

This book has such a presence about it, from the start it captures your attention and keeps you hooked.

The dual timeline works brilliantly, equally as poignant as unapologetically honest.

1955 we follow Dovie and Gillan. At a time where homosexuality was a crime, a condition to be 'fixed', their relationship was portrayed with dignity and beauty, and with all the sadness and prejudice you'd expect from the time.

1975 Ava's story is just as heartbreaking, but for completely different reasons. Ava is just about holding on and at 16 doesn't know where to place herself, not important enough to matter.

Both stories coming together concluding with all the grace the story deserves.

Overall.
That Green Eyed Girl is a novel that holds power in its meaning. Its evocative presence captured my heart, stirring feelings that will stay long after I'd closed the last page. The pacing is quite steady but absolutely perfect for its theme. Beautifully written, perfect characterisation a must read for 2022.

A very atmospheric story, centred around the occupants of an apartment in New York twenty years apart.
Julie Owen Moylan captures the feel of New York is these different timelines. A mystery box turns up in 1975 just as teenage Ava's family life is falling apart, the box gives her something to focus on and as she investigates the box we are led into the story of Dovie and Gillian.
A story of love, friendship, heartbreak, disappointment, regret and jealousy.

A great read for summer.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read That Green Eyed Girl.

A stunning novel that transports you to a different time and place and makes you feel like you’re smack-bang in the middle of the story. A novel that is highly atmospheric, with fantastic characters and a back-drop that pulls you in and makes you go through every emotion imaginable.

Julie is a brilliant storyteller and has created an evocative and powerful mystery. This is heart-wrenching and tragic at times but it’s also beautiful and addictive. You won’t want it to end.

What a story of love, friendship, manipulation and fear.

It really struck me how Dovie and Gilly could not be together for fear of the authorities and what would befall them if anyone knew they were lovers for certain.

This really opened my eyes as to the struggles that same sex relationships have gone through. Imagine being thrown in prison or a mental hospital simply from loving the wrong person. It breaks my heart.

I would urge anyone to read this book. It is beautifully written and tells more than 1 story which I love.

What a gorgeous read and a stunning cover ! This is a dual timeline novel set in the same apartment on the Lower East side of New York in 1955 and 1975. It is a beautifully written and original novel filled with love and empathy for the main characters, with an underlying feeling of tension running throughout. The author brings to life the two periods and the characters so well and I loved Dovie from 1955 and Ava from 1975. I would highly recommend this novel and look forward to buying a published copy for the gorgeous cover.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

What a book!


That Green Eyed Girl was such a good read. I felt like I was right there in the book and I loved the characters. I wanted the best for all of them. I needed it all to work out!


It was heartbreaking, raw and it made me happy all at the same time.



I got way to invested in this book. To the point that I spent an hour and half finishing it in the bath. Talk about wrinkly 😂




Thank you @michaeljbooks for allowing me to be part of your book tour for this wonderful book!