I was drawn to Moon Road by the comparisons to Elizabeth Strout, one of my favourite writers. I found the writing style very different to Strout’s but it’s still a beautiful and immersive novel that drew me completely into the relationship of Kathleen and Yannick. After 19 years of estrangement the couple are brought back together on a road trip across Canada when there is a development in the disappearance of their daughter Una.
The writing is gorgeous and I really took my time to savour this novel. I loved the beautiful Canadian setting and the authors portrays the couples relationship with insight and sensitivity.
A beautiful novel that I’d recommend.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

I enjoyed this one. I liked the characters and storyline. I read it with one of my friends who enjoyed it too. Recommend.

A deeply evocative story that takes you on a journey right alongside Yannick and Kathleen as they set out on an epic road trip back to the site of their daughter Una's disappearance.

Yannick and Kathleen were married once, and had one child together. They remained close friends for many years until a fight left them estranged for nineteen years.

But now, with possible news of their missing daughter, they depart on a journey and along the way they will reflect on their lives, both together and apart. They will reinforce their connection and reach some kind of resolution, even though the mystery of what happened to Una remains unsolved.

A tender and moving story that's a fast read, and yet never feels rushed. A truly beautiful book.

A good fiction, well plotted and thought provoking
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Sadly this book didn't really connect for me and while I liked the premise and the Canadian setting I never felt that I got under the skin of the characters enough to have an emotional response to the book, I was always kept at arm's length and this left me cold.

For more than two decades, Una has remained missing, a haunting absence in the lives of her parents, Kathleen and Yannick. Despite the passage of time, their hope of someday finding her has never waned. Although Kathleen and Yannick parted ways during Una's childhood, they maintained a friendship until a significant falling out occurred later on. Kathleen, especially, struggles to move forward, clinging to an annual awareness party and eagerly awaiting any news.

Yannick attempted to rebuild his life through multiple marriages and additional children but never found the fulfilment he sought. When remains are discovered that may belong to Una, old grievances are set aside, and a journey spanning thousands of miles across the country ensues.

While Una's disappearance forms the backbone of the narrative, the heart of the story lies in Kathleen and Yannick's relationship. The road trip serves as a vehicle for unravelling the complexities of their dynamic, exposing Kathleen's growing self-absorption in her pursuit for closure and Yannick's perpetual search for happiness, forever elusive since Una vanished.

This book is to be savoured, its narrative unfolding gradually alongside the miles travelled. It prompts reflection and lingers in the mind long after turning the final page.

Thank you so much to the author - Sarah Leipciger and the team at Doubleday Books for the copy!

I wanted to get an idea of/read this novel as it was compared by some Goodreads readers to Elizabeth Strout (whose books I love), but I just couldn’t get into this and I didn’t really see the likeness to Strout either. The beginning is intriguing, with the sleeping woman in the tree (probably Una), but when the story continues with Kathleen and Yannick I kept getting distracted and started reading other books. I see that this is getting quite good reviews on Goodreads, but I’m afraid I personally wasn’t invested enough to finish this.
Thank you Doubleday and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

Thank you for allowing me to review this book. I'm afraid, that although I have read about half the book I feel unable to finish it. I have put it aside for a several weeks, but I don't think I will be finishing it anytime soon. The story is too slow for me. The characters are not grabbing me.

Divorced couple Kathleen and Yannick haven't spoken for nearly 20 years, almost as long as their daughter, Una, has been missing, After all this time, human remains have been found in Vancouver Island where Una was last known to live and Yannick and Kathleen take a road trip from Ontario to assist in the identification. As they make their way West their complicated shared history unfolds and the impact of their loss of their daughter and each other plays out.

I truly loved this beautiful, thoughtful book. Kathleen and Yannick are brilliantly realised characters and their story is tender, funny and rich. I felt quite bereft when I finished the last page!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced review copy,

Loved this book! The characters are well drawn, the plotting is superb. Just the right mix of intrigue, and humour. In what is ultimately a novel about grief, reconciliation and acceptance. Almost painfully human, Beautiful. Thank you so much for my ARC.

This book was slow paced but enjoyable and quite thought provoking and deep in parts.

A couple Katherine and Yannick haven’t been together for 19 yrs after the loss of their daughter
Now some remains have been found.

I’m a huge Elizabeth Strout fan and this book was likened to her work so drew me in. However whilst I can see why similarities have been made and I do think this book is well written it did not hit the high standards of Strout. So it would have be3n better for me if I had just read it without the hype I think.

Adored this novel so much. It reminded me of Elizabeth Strout in its style, and its focus on character and ordinary life, and that’s the highest compliment I could pay!

Moon Road is a closely examined account of a grief suspended, diverted, and denied. But it also speaks of endurance and the possibility of acceptance. It is a sad book, but shot through with hope - and is often very funny.

Leipciger writes with great heart about the lives of Kathleen and Yannick, and of their daughter, Una. Kathleen and Yannick were married, until they weren't. Yannick marrying and re-marrying and fathering a sequence of kids, Kathleen remaining single. Yet they remained friends. Then, a dreadful thing happens, a thing they can't come together over. Hurt and grieving, they never meet again, not for 19 years, the book opening just as that period comes to an end. What follows is a rackety kind of reunion, a thing of probing and silences and anguish.

I should be clear that this is not always an easy read. We see in flashback the parents' responses to a catastrophe - responses that are, with hindsight, splitting them apart, and because these parts of the story are in flashback, we know there's no happy ending yet. So we see both of them adjusting to grief, perhaps feeling they are trying it on, expecting that normality will reappear, but we know - and they don't - that it's here to stay. It's a credit to Leipciger's writing that these parts of the story, which one might think would drag, sparkle, rather, as we come to appreciate the two awkward, perplexed characters and to understand them as more than containers for grief and hope.

In the present day of this book, Kathleen and Yannick are together again, kind of. Not romantically, but because they need to make a journey across Canada, thousands of miles, to Vancouver Island, where there may be news for them. They can't take a plane, because of Yannick's fear of flight. They can't shortcut through the US, because of his iffy history with the law. So they drive, a couple of septuagenarians, one (Kathleen) with a bad tooth, the other with a dodgy back, made worse by hours of immobility in the car. Nights are spent in cheap motels, meals taken in diners or skipped.

It's a road trip, kind of, visiting endless back-of-nowhere towns and the sights and experiences of the journey - from bullying truck drivers to a broken down VW camper (of course). Through this, the two bicker and freeze, melt and share memories, argue about the future and compare versions of the past. We see those lost moments, the ones where you had some perfectly ordinary interaction with another person, one you imagined would be only the latest iteration of a lifelong conversation but which will be the last you hear of them, the final word.

What did he mean by that?

What if I'd said this instead?

Why did she leave?

Endless possibilities for guilt and self-rebuke. Through it, Kathleen and Yannick come alive. At first, she's not likeable. Driven by a quest, determined that Una won't be forgotten, she treats others like walk-on actors in her own drama, almost deliberately neglecting herself and her own comfort too (that tooth). It's not that Kathleen sat down and gave up, rather the opposite, she started and runs a flourishing flower nursery after what happened, more that she cuts certain things and feelings out of her life and expects others too as well. Yannick wouldn't, so she cut him out too. On the surface, he's perhaps easier to like but that does unravel through the journey. Yannick is also stubborn and his procession of ex-wives and kids suggests a restlessness, an avoidance of facts.

Now, perhaps, Kathleen and Yannick have a chance to reconsider their choices, if they have the courage to do that. Leipciger works some magic with both, but especially, perhaps, with Kathleen so that by the end of the book I think we understand her much better. I found her - not likeable, exactly, but true, perhaps.

Throughout the novel we're also given glimpses of a young woman - 'our girl' - through a single day whose history will intertwine with the rest. Again, it's an account of a very ordinary day, really, a day that at countless points could have taken different turns. The ordinariness is seen through the lens of knowing that something happened, bringing certain moments into especial forces, as it were, and scattering little crumbs the we'll see the relevance of later. As a consequence, otherwise mundane events and feelings are made significant, their meaning open to interpretation.

The whole thing is a brilliant piece not writing and makes for absorbing reading. It's not a book to race through, there are episodes and threads which demand thought and parts that reward being revisited - my Kindle copy ended up dotted with bookmarks and searches as I went back and forward - but it is deeply rewarding and has remained with me.

This novel about strong minded characters has a very deep & evocative thread to it. The descriptions of the various areas our characters go through is deliciously captivating even when there is a deep sadness or loneliness associated to them but at the same time there is a charm that sucks you deeper into the story . I didn't just love this book I adored it & will be highly recommending it to both Family & Friends. #NetGalley, #GoodReads, #FB, #Instagram, #Amazon.co.uk, # <img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/8a5b541512e66ae64954bdaab137035a5b2a89d2" width="80" height="80" alt="200 Book Reviews" title="200 Book Reviews"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/ef856e6ce35e6d2d729539aa1808a5fb4326a415" width="80" height="80" alt="Reviews Published" title="Reviews Published"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/aa60c7e77cc330186f26ea1f647542df8af8326a" width="80" height="80" alt="Professional Reader" title="Professional Reader"/>.

I received an ARC of this book via netgalley. Una , the daughter of Kaherine and Yannick disappeared some years ago. Now some human remains have been found. Yannik wants to travel to where their daughte disappeared but Katherine who is seperated from yannick initially feels that what needs to be done can be done from home. Eventually they set off together to find some resolution to their plight.

For me the narrative is under whelming. I feel like i have had to unearth the centrepiece of the narrative from the mass of other events.

The characterisation is not making me love / hate or even understand the main players and the whole things is just a bit flat

An estranged couple who haven’t spoken in 19 years after their daughter went missing, take a trip across Canada with the hope of finally getting answers to what happened their daughter.

This was a really thoughtful and gorgeous portrayal of a couple who fell apart. Well developed authentic characters, well paced and i really liked how this story weaved together. Parenting, love, divorce, memory , loss, hope- all the big human emotions and situations are present and written about with great care. A really gorgeous read, I need to check out more from Sarah Leipcigar, I loved this writing in this one.

This was a slow burn of a read, which I was glad I stuck with - though I was close to abandoning it once or twice!

Kathleen, the protagonist, is not a very likeable character at first - irascible, rude and impatient with everyone around her. However, as you get to know her, it is clear that there is more than meets the eye. Kathleen knows grief on a scale which would crush even the strongest of characters. It is only when Yannick, her ex-husband comes to town that her hidden, traumatic depths start to be revealed.

Yannick persuades Kathleen to go join her on an important road trip, which could have dark consequences for them both. This prolonged time in the car allows them to address a long-festering argument and in turn Kathleen's past is revealed. Yannick and Kathleen have a daughter, Una, but all is not what it seems. They revisit their marriage and past mistakes. Yannick has remarried to escape his past - which has left him lonely and isolated. Kathleen has been frozen in the past, so, for different reasons, has ended up alone and isolated.

Interwoven with the current timeline, there is another shadowy character who appears to be living a nomadic life. The two time lines do cross and all is revealed, but not necessarily resolved.

An intriguing read - rarely joyful, but it made me deeply thoughtful and appreciative of the people in my life!

unfortunately this one wasn’t for me and i eventually DNFed after 100 pages. i just didn’t connect with the characters and found the first 100 pages slow paced and rather boring

Kathryn and Yannick had a daughter once but she upped and left following the moon road.
Kathryn and Yannick have not spoken for 19 years but a discovery of bones has led them to travel thousands of miles together.
on the way their marriage and lives are dissected and relived.
Emotions are high but a bond is still there between them.
What will they find at the journey and will they find peace at last.