Light of the Moon by Luanne Rice

Genre: Women’s Fiction, Audio

Susannah Connolly is devastated when her mother passes away from a long illness. She is consumed with guilt that she wasn’t there in her mother’s last hours, but she was out of town on business at her mother’s insistence. Her mother’s dying wish is for Susannah to visit Southern France and Saint Sarah, the Romany gypsies’ patron saint. Saint Sarah helped Susannah’s mother have a child when there was no hope.

During her trip, Susannah meets Grey Dempsey, the owner of a local stable and ranch. She is immediately drawn to the man and falls in love, but his troubled teenage daughter, Sari, stands in their way. Five years prior, Sari’s mother, Maria, left her family to be with another man. Maria turned her back on Sari, who tried to stop her mother from leaving but instead suffered an accident in the process. The accident left Sari in a colorless world as she suffered from color blindness since that day. Sari never recovered from her mother’s abandonment and certainly didn’t want her father involved with another woman.

This was an audio book that I listened to on my way to and from work. I don’t usually listen to audio books, but I decided to give it a try. “Light of the Moon” was a touching story of daughters and their relationship with their mother, as well as two lonely people finding love together. The reader of this book was quite good and was soothing to listen to. The story was touching, although it did take me awhile to get into it. The characters were well-developed and I had a sense of the ones I enjoyed and the ones I didn’t like. I usually can depend on Luanne Rice for a good, emotional read and this one was in that same line.