How Moon Fuentez Fell In Love with the Universe by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland | Book Review

Hello friends! Today I want to share my thoughts about a book which unexpectedly becomes one of my 2022 favorites. It’s so rare for a contemporary romance book to be a favorite, so I want to make it into one blog post here. I read this book on June via Storytel app. There are both audiobook and e-book formats for this book, and I love going between these formats because there are some Spanish words I need to learn too. This book is the last book I read on June, and it perfectly closed the June reading journey nicely. So this blog post is about How Moon Fuentez Made Me Fall In Love with This Book..

How Moon Fuentez Fell In Love with the Universe by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland | Book Review

Length                               : 432 pages | 11H 51M

Narrator                            : Kyla Garcia

Date released                    : August 10, 2021

Date read                           : June 23-29, 2022

Goodreads rating               : 4.36

My rating                           : 4.50

Keywords                           : New adult, Romance, Magical Realism, Contemporary, Family, Friendship,

                                         Cooking, Art, Twin Sisters, Enemies to Lovers, LGBT, BIPOC main character,

                                         Mental Health

Trigger warnings            : Parental abuse, bullying, car accident, depression, trauma, religious themes

                                          Death, panic attack, misogyny, fatphobia, sexual content, menstruation

Where to read                 : Storytel

BLURB

“When her twin sister reaches social media stardom, Moon Fuentez accepts her fate as the ugly, unwanted sister hidden in the background, destined to be nothing more than her sister’s camerawoman. But this summer, Moon also takes a job as the “merch girl” on a tour bus full of beautiful influencers and her fate begins to shift in the best way possible.

Most notable is her bunkmate and new nemesis, Santiago Phillips, who is grumpy, combative, and also the hottest guy Moon has ever seen.

Moon is certain she hates Santiago and that he hates her back. But as chance and destiny (and maybe, probably, close proximity) bring the two of them in each other’s perpetual paths, Moon starts to wonder if that’s really true. She even starts to question her destiny as the unnoticed, unloved wallflower she always thought she was.

Could this summer change Moon’s life as she knows it?” (Goodreads)

MY THOUGHTS

I didn’t expect to love this book so much. I don’t usually pick a contemporary romance and I didn’t know that it has a little bit of magical realism inside the story.

First and foremost, this book is not only about an unwanted sister and the handsome dude romance thing, but it’s deeper than that. This book talks about mental health, parental abuse, trauma, loss of loved ones, bullying, body shaming and even foods. This book has religious themes where the main character is against what her family especially her mom and her neighborhood beliefs, so if you see this theme as uncomfortable topic, you have been warned.

Moon is the twin sister of Star, the famous influencer with 1 million followers. In this book, Star Fuentez is described as beautiful without trying and has angelic look, and Moon’s thoughts about her sister’s beauty are so related. I wonder how someone can be so beautiful without trying, and how if they donate 1% of theirs to me. Hahaha. Moon thought about stuff like that too, which makes me instantly feel connected to her.

This book also talks about people who are against make up and see people wearing make up as less than them. The good thing is the beautiful Star without make-up is always portrayed as beautiful here and Moon loves her as her sister even though a lot of time she gets disappointed because Star underestimates and sees her in the similar way as her mom does. Moon never tries to see Star as less than her even though the principles of Star’s brand is wearing no make up and the natural beauty. Moon honestly stated that she loves Star as her sister, and she can’t really hate her. We can see the sibling/family bond which is created from the early age and its effect on people until someone clearly asks them why they did what they did.

This book made me cry in some parts because what Moon feels and thinks are those I have ever felt in the past. That’s why I’m so proud of Moon who is a brave and honest person, who speaks her mind and thoughts even though it goes against her mom’s. This book also shows us how the child of the family can’t go out of their family even though they have been treated badly and abused because they don’t know how and because this family is the first thing they ever know as safety and home.

The two things that make this book got high rating from me is the topic it’s discussed and Moon’s humor. She is so funny and creative. This is the first book which describe someone’s body in metallic way, literally. I usually don’t like book with the main character who constantly talks about their crush’s muscles or how the crush’s good looking face and body. Moon adores the love interest’s appearance so much but it’s in a way that makes me laugh.

Okay let me tell you a secret, any book that makes me laugh in almost every chapter will always get rating 4 or more, because I love laughing so much. Why Keefe is my number one crush? Because he makes me laugh A  LOT. So, make me laugh and you get 4 stars or more! Haha.

There are many things that often happen in our every day life which are picked to get some spotlight in this book. The most common thing here, in Indonesia, is using people with certain disability or people under the poverty line to get popularity by helping them and sharing what we have done to help them in social media. I’m not against sharing good things to encourage more people do more good. But, I don’t like using people with “poor” or “disabled” labels to get popularity, views, clicks or anything. I adore Raquel Vasquez Gilliland to include this issue into a story.

“But maybe everything is magic and we just get used to the magic or something.”

This book has interesting title for each chapter which can be about Moon’s past or Moon’s recent experiences, or just about her opinion about something. It feels like someone talks to you as their friend and it feels so natural and casual, that I don’t think about the pace or the plot or anything. I simply listen to a friend talk about her story.

I also learned some Spanish words from this book because Moon loves learning Spanish and one word that’s mentioned the most is La Raiz, and I love the narrator’s way to speak this word. It sounds so beautiful. Overall this book is one of my unexpected favorites on 2022.

So, if you want to read a contemporary romance with a little bit of magical realism and some discussions about deeper things and of course food, you might like this book. Don’t forget to check the trigger warnings before picking this book. So, have you read this book? Tell me down below.