Lush is an understatement for this novel but fits well in the atmospheric and beautiful prose in many softer time travel stories. The focus on family, immigration, and feeling othered was emotionally impactful and poignant.

This intense story utilizes time travel to show jumps between perspective and time. Each character was very well developed and make you feel as if you know them throughout their journeys. Wonderful writing and flow! Thank you, Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.

I almost never read celebrity recommended books. But when that celebrity is Gemma Chan and the title is inspired by Teresa Teng's iconic ballad, I at least had to give it a go. I highly recommend listening to the song and reading about its cultural impact going into this because if ever a book FEELS like a song, it's this one. Haunting and enduring and quietly revolutionary. This is a time travel story but it's less sci-fi more epic poetry. The main POVs are family members who all have time traveling abilities but the rules are different for all of them. It is literal time travel as well as metaphorical in how each of these characters travel through not just time, but trauma, displacement, and grief. There's love stories aplenty in this, but also just threads of deep love among individuals and for the self. Which is significant in the context of the song title and the Chinese diasporic culture. If you're someone that enjoys the emotional and narrative scope of the works by Simon Jimenez, it is similarly expansive yet intimately moving. I cannot gush enough about this. I'm tempted to give it 5 stars, but there were some dropped threads I could have used a wee bit more closure on, like Christelle's traveler family members, and more on Daisy. Perhaps I'm only nitpicking because I can hardly believe this is a debut novel. I cannot wait for the film adaptation!

The Wang family can time travel, but each family member travels in a different way or to a different time period. Their ability to travel causes them to be somewhat disconnected from the present and when the parents travel back in time and never come back, twins Evan and Tommy have to deal with their grief and move on. Eva tries to connect with her art while also dealing with the voices of her family's past and Tommy meets Peggy from the 1930's and finds himself visiting her more and more. As they grow older, Eva returns to Hong Kong and meets her father's family and becomes an art teacher, while Tommy gets a job and has a family though he can't let go of Peggy. Overall, a story of family and grief and how people try to move on in their lives. Since this is about time travel, the book jumps timelines a lot and the chapter headings are important for determining what year is being talked about. Some of the chapters are told in a more poetic format, which can be difficult to follow at times.

This book was lyrical, poetic, and heartbreaking (despite the strange formatting for the eARC copy); however, I found I could not connect with the characters or the story in more than a surface-level way. The ending was beautiful and provided an ounce of closure, but I felt that the overall storyline was never finished or resolved, which I am sure was purposeful with the general vagueness and poetical feel of the book, but it just did not provide the experience I was hoping for. I think I also picked up this book at the wrong time in my life to really sit down and absorb it.

Thank you NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a beautiful exploration of family, grief, and closure. The themes are explored amply, and the writing is beautiful as well. I found myself with a lump in my throat really often, and that's always a sign of a good book.

The Moon Represents My Heart is a multi-generational, sweeping story about love, grief and the choices your parents make.

It was DEVASTATING but in the best way. The entire cast of characters are so compelling and developed that I just wanted to keep reading more.


The prose is exquisite. The whole novel feels like a romantic, sweeping story about time-travel but is quiet and subtle at the same time. I found myself re-reading several chapters just so I could feel them again.

I read this novel and recommended it to the collegiate library for our college students to borrow from the fiction section. I also think it would be a good addition to a public library catalogue for adult borrowers.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for this wonderful story!
Time travel is one of those subjects done poorly or done really well — this book completely delivered! Each of the main character’s relationship with their time traveling gift was such a fascinating take on the concept. Pim Wangtechawat weaves a bittersweet story that will be on my mind and heart for a while (in the best way).

A hilarious and heartbreaking dual narrative from the perspectives of two cousins who have differing memories of their upbringing.

I received this book as a NetGalley ARC. The Moon Represents my Heart is a story about the Chinese-British Wang family who are time travelers. There are the parents Joshua and Lily and their twin children Tommy and Eva. They all have different kinds so time traveling abilities. On one of the time traveling trips, Joshua and Lilly end up disappearing and not returning. Tommy and Eva are then left to, at a young age, continue living their lives.
This book has multiple time lines and multiple POV’s that jump around quite a bit. I think this book has a great premise but felt like it was missing something. The beginning is pretty interesting, the middle gets really muddy, and the end is where I got the most interested, but it didn’t quite deliver an ending where it felt resolved. Now, if that’s the point or theme of the novel than I understand, but for those looking for a tidy resolution — this is not one of those books.
I saw that it is slated to have some kind of tv or movie deal, and honestly I think it may work a little better in that format. I would probably watch the show/movie. The book overall is okay.

DNF at 32%.

Mirroring other reviewers' thoughts, I liked the overall idea and premise of this story, but ultimately I was unable to connect with these characters. The formatting of the eARC was not very good, and a lot of the storyline/plot felt disconnected/disjointed. Eva felt like an afterthought. Tommy and Eva's parents lacked depth for me. Tommy's plot was okay, but not one I found myself caring about.

I got hints of <i>The Time Traveler's Wife</i>, and hoped that a bigger cast of characters (a Chinese family! who time travels!) would be really cool and interesting, but alas. It just didn't meet the expectations I had for it. Which was a real bummer.

This was a DNF for me (30%).

If you like beautiful prose and a winding story with multiple POVs and time periods, then this book might be for you. But it was not for me. I didn't feel like the story was going anywhere. It felt disjointed with every chapter being a different POV and time period. I just couldn't get invested in any of the storylines. A certain reader might love this book, but unfortunately I'm not that reader.

I adore books about time travel (it’s my very favorite trope!) so I was excited to be granted an eARC of THE MOON REPRESENTS MY HEART. The book is gorgeously written, unfolding almost like a poem. There are some beautiful things in this novel, but ultimately, it fell a little flat for me.

The book starts out strong: Joshua and Lily are able to time travel, and after teaching their twin children, Tommy and Eva, how to do so, they disappear while trying to go back further in time than they ever had previously. This leaves the twins picking up the pieces of their lives and struggling to cope when their grandmother moves in. She forbids them to travel and tries to protect them by making sure they don’t follow in their parents’ footsteps.

There are several different storylines here, and THE MOON REPRESENTS MY HEART follows several generations of the Chinese immigrant family living in London. There were quite a few characters and sometimes I got lost trying to figure out who was who.

In the end, I wasn’t able to totally relate to the characters because the storyline was too confusing. I didn’t know who was who and when things were happening. THE MOON REPRESENTS MY HEART reminds me of The Time Traveler’s Wife, but unfortunately I lost the thread of the story halfway through and wasn’t able to capture the magic again.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the eARC of THE MOON REPRESENTS MY HEART and for the opportunity to give my honest feedback.

Being from a family of time travelers is not easy, a fact which Tommy and Eva are forcibly reminded of when their parents suddenly vanish one day during a trip into the past. This action sends the twins' lives into a tailspin, the echoes of which reverberate into both the past and the future. The story follows Tommy and Eva as they age into their abilities and their adult lives, but it is also a generational epic spanning decades, dipping in and out of their parents respective pasts and the histories of their intertwined families. I really liked how each of the four members of the Wang family have slightly different abilities - Tommy can only travel back to London prior to 1950, for example, and Eva can only travel back into the lives of her immediate family member. It was a nice spin on the typical time travel narrative, and made for an interesting dimension to each character's story.

However, as much as I liked the plot I really struggled to connect with the characters. Though I could see how they were a result of his pain, Tommy's choices angered me, and Eva's journey occasionally felt like an afterthought to her brother's turmoil. Neither of Tommy's love interests, Peggy or May, were given the diligent character work they deserved. I especially felt like May was shortchanged: I didn't especially like her, but do think this was somewhat intentional and meant to expand and complicate Tommy''s character moreso than establish hers. Joshua and Lily, Tommy and Evas parents, actually had the more compelling story for me, but as soon as their children were born the story became less about their lives and more about how the children fit into it. To me, the places felt more alive to me than the people: from the close, warm streets and overlapping voices of Hong Kong's Walled City to the smoggy streets of 1920s London,

While the ending was beautiful and cyclical in the way I always hope to find in time travel novels, closure was frustrating elusive. The primary mystery of the story is never fully solved, and while I'm sure this is related to some larger message about the reality of straightforward answers in life it was disappointing as a reader. While I appreciate this story for its unique take on time travel and beautiful messages about family, community, and the Chinese immigrant experience in Britain, I didn't feel that it lived up to its full potential.

I don't think I picked this up at the right time. I'm not sure about it's circularity, a third round purchase for most libraries.

If Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood For Love had a time-traveling spiritual successor, it would be THIS book. If Somewhere in Time also grappled with immigrant experiences, diaspora, and generational trauma, it is THIS book (and more!) If you enjoy a sci-fi bent to your books with a cast of people of color that reads like poetry - I can’t stress this enough - this. Is. THAT. Book.

To say that I loved this book is likely the understatement of the year. “The Moon Represents My Heart” is as if a painter decided to trade their watercolors for words, a dazzling novel that explores heartache and loss in more ways than one.

The simplest way I can offer a synopsis is as follows: Joshua and Lilly find each other in 1980’s London as the sole Asian faces they see at their university. They fall in love and also happen to be two people who can time travel, but only to very specific places and times. While they conduct research into their talent, their children Eva and Tommy inherit this ability and the whole family becomes enveloped in a time-traveling drama that spans centuries, generations, and continents.

I can’t wait to start recommending this book to more Cantonese folks in my life; this book already had me reeling in my feelings as an immigrant and an inheritor of painful legacies of migration, let alone if it’s my own family’s history being explored. And it does so with so much love, painstaking detail, and profound empathy for its characters, even when they make the most unfortunate, obsessive decisions (I’m looking at you, Tommy).

Sentimental but never mawkish, “The Moon Represents My Heart” took mine, smashed it, and then travelled to the past and future in an effort to mend it. Eva’s storyline in particular and the role of art in community building will probably stick with me for a long, long time. Excited to see the reception of this book especially for those it lovingly dedicates itself to.

This didn't disappoint! I loved the time travel hook, the locations, the family dramas, the stories. Just a really solid book. It jumped around a lot from person to person and even in time but it was tight and made sense. I can't say that about every book I've read likely.

The Wang family -- parents Joshua and Lily and twins Tommy and Eva -- all possess the gift of time travel. When Joshua and Lily disappear on one time-travel attempt, 12-year-old Tommy and Eva must learn to deal with their grief, and their own time traveling offers them different ways of coping with their loss. While Eva follows the voices of her ancestors and learns more about her family, incorporating it into her art, Tommy returns time and again to London's East End before World War II to meet and fall in love with Peggy. But as they reach adulthood, their separate experiences begin to pull the twins apart.

This lyrical and mesmerizing story hops between perspectives and times, revealing in pieces not only Tommy and Eva's journeys but their parents' childhoods and how they came together. Even in the briefest snippets of narrative, the author deftly creates a clear picture of each character and the dynamics between them. While the writing shifts from prose to verse, sometimes seemingly randomly, it has a lightness that gives the reader a feeling of drifting through time along with the characters.

Dreamy, utterly unputdownable. 4.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you, Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.