Not my favourite book by Sayers but a really moody story, I loved the old Hollywood portion do the story more than the modern day.

This is a book that covers lots of genres and will appeal to many people, Sayers has a talent for magical realism and I’ll read anything she writes.

1.5/5 Stars

TL;DR - A long, meandering mess of a book that frustrated me at every turn. A super intriguing premise with a terrible execution. This book didn’t know what it wanted to be, and in the end, it wound up being nothing much at all.

Big thanks to Redhook and NetGalley for providing the ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review!

***Trigger warnings for: mentions of alcoholism and drug use by a parent, child neglect, emotional abuse, threats of suicide, sexism, riot violence, institutionalization of a parent, death of a parent, mentions of miscarriage, unwanted sexual advances, mentions of suicide, gore, mentions of drug use, and violence.***

‘The Star and the Strange Moon’ by Constance Sayers is…a book. It sure is. It’s more historical fiction than the fantasy it was shelved under on NetGalley, and why yes, I am salty about it. It’s told in two POVs, one beginning in 1968 from Gemma Turner, a struggling American actress who accepts a role in a French horror film, only to disappear on set, and one that begins in 1986 from Christopher Kent, a boy and then man who spends his life obsessed with finding out the truth of what really happened to Gemma. We follow them both as they play out a series of events neither can escape, but just might be able to change.

Hey, wow, I hated this. I want to write a long-winded rant review, but I just don’t have it in me after slogging to the finish line. I’ll try to be brief. (Future Jess chiming in to say that, no, I was not brief.)

First, as mentioned in the TL;DR, this book is all over the place, and not in a good way. This is not a genre-bending story, this is approximately seven thousand conflicting ideas stuffed inside a trench coat pretending to be a cohesive story. It’s not horror, it’s not true historical fiction, it’s barely magical realism. If I tried *really* hard to pin it down, it’s a mystery with some vague fantastical nonsense tacked on here and there. There are so many things happening that, on their own or in a combination of two or three, could have been a really unique and compelling story, but as it stands, it’s too much and simultaneously not enough, and it was not fun at all.

The writing is uninspired and amateurish. Maybe this is a fluke, a rare miss for the author, but I don’t understand how her work has won awards. I would have guessed this was a self-published debut if I hadn’t looked up the author during the course of reading.

(I counted two rewordings of “she let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding” just in the first 7%, literally stop it, ma’am.)

Every little detail about the setting is laboriously over-explained to the point that I had to start skimming through descriptions for my own sanity. Let me preface this gripe with the fact that, in conversations, I don’t like small talk - it’s boring filler that makes me lose interest. In books, superfluous over-description is small talk, and it turns me off to what I’m reading. I want enough information to establish a setting, and to move on and focus on the meat of the story, which is the plot and characters. This book has so much small talk, food and furniture and movie trivia and clothing, that I personally don’t give a single hoot about. If you like being told every detail of every little thing, you’ll probably love this, but it was overwhelming and simultaneously boring to me. This could have been, conservatively, 50+ pages shorter if the author would just shut up about things that don’t matter to the narrative.

(This could have been 150+ pages shorter if the author had picked a genre and a single storyline to follow, but hey, here we are at nearly 480 pages according to Goodreads. Yeesh.)

There are instances where characters just know things, or get “feelings” that give them information they would have no logical way of knowing, and it’s beyond annoying. Like, “this is the moment my life changes” or “these two unconnected things are absolutely connected based on absolutely nothing”, just for the sake of, I don't know, faux tension? The text repeatedly relies on trite little sayings like, “she had a premonition of sorts that this film was going to be the undoing of her”, or “he had a feeling none of it was a coincidence”, and the majority of chapters end with Gemma and Christopher “having a feeling” about events to come, and I by that I mean, it’s at least every other chapter, if not more. I capital-H Hate this - unless you’re writing a book about people who can literally see the future (which this book is not), just shut up and let events unfold! One of my biggest pet peeves in fiction that did this book no favors.

(In that vein, I present this line that I had to read with my own eyes: “[…] Christopher was surer than ever that the only way to have a crack at solving Gemma Turner’s disappearance was talking about it, gathering information from people who didn’t even know they knew something”. Congrats, you just figured out how any crime gets solved, ever. What in the graceless, on the nose, telling-not-showing is this??)

And that’s another main thing I took issue with, that is the basis of my claim of amateurish writing (aside from the meandering plot). The book is very surface-level and relies on flat-out telling the reader things instead of doing the work to show it. Characters’ introspection and thought processes are relatively shallow, and I never felt like I was experiencing the story alongside the characters, just that the author is non-stop telling both of us how we should feel and what to think instead of letting it happen naturally. Everything is shouted through a megaphone at us, with little to no narrative evidence or authorial work to back up these claims.

(Ma’am. Ma'am. Don’t tell me a villain is, verbatim, “a worthy adversary” when all his “nefarious plans” are middle school level “evil plots” and he’s vanquished with very little effort.)

(Actually, all of the “villains” are defeated very easily, and often nonsensically, and ultimately Gemma and Christopher are let off scot-free because the BBEG “got bored”. Lazy writing, tsk tsk.)

I will concede, after all this, that Gemma is a halfway decent character. She has agency and fire, she’s smart and determined…to a point. No one in this book feels *good* or entirely well-written, but I was a hundred times more interested in Gemma’s chapters than I ever was about Christopher’s. I wish the entire book had been about her, and that we’d gotten to know her on a deeper level. The only reason this is 1.5 stars instead of a straight 1 is because I liked Gemma, but she was woefully underutilized.

Christopher, on the other hand, is a cardboard cutout with a part-and-parcel sad backstory. I felt for him in his childhood and the things he endured, but as soon as he was like 20, I stopped caring. No personality, no compelling character traits, no redeeming qualities. Just the token MMC here to tick a box that, in my humble opinion, the story didn’t even need. But hey, not my book, not my monkeys.

(And yes, by all means, please do let a character who many times refuses to play a tropey damsel-in-distress ultimately need to be “rescued” by a man. Neat, perfect, no notes.)

Plot-wise, all over the place. Tension, very little. Structure, also very little. The way I see it, the story doesn’t really start until 75% through. I wish all of the long, overdrawn fluff had been cut from the beginning and that the meat of the story had focused on everything that happened past the 75% mark. Overall the entire book is a muddy mess that can’t decide what it wants to be or how best to do it.

And then. AND THEN.

There’s a last-minute romance plot that doesn’t start until 80% of the way through (literally when they meet), they’re in love by 88%, and they’re banging by 90%. It’s all presented as this whole “star-crossed lovers, connected by mysterious forces” (the cover literally says, “a mystery only love can unravel”, barf), but it’s just a dude with a very unhealthy obsession and a woman jumping on the first guy who isn’t a total asshole to her. Not my idea of a love story, no thanks, I hate it.

The “twist” psuedo-villain is plain as day, the actual villain is nonsensical and barely relevant, the MacGuffin could have been cool but didn’t show up until the end of the book and was barely relevant, and yes, the climax boils down to “the power of love”. Utterly ridiculous, the lot of it, the kind of stuff I’d have eaten up in middle school as “deep” and “cool”, but as an adult, it’s laughably juvenile.

Final Thoughts:

So much wasted potential. Had this been a story solely about Gemma, with a firm grasp on genre, and the intellectual maturity of the whole story was notched up another 15-20 years, it could have been a masterpiece. As it stands, it’s entirely forgettable, and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing as soon as the migraine dissipates. No hard copy, no backwards glance, no thank you.

I love this book!! It's so atmospheric, dark and strange, that I couldn't stop reading. The dual timelines were both compelling and I was never bored with either. The entire plot was just such a cool concept, and it was executed well. Constance Sayers is going to be an automatic read from now on.

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook for access to this arc.

Thank you NetGalley and Redhook Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Gemma Turner disappears in 1968, but this novel spans decades on decades. Gemma is trapped in the horror film she was on set for and is cursed to run the scenes over and over until the mysterious director is satisfied with the take. Christopher Kent goes to film school in the late 90s and early 2000s, but has spent his entire life obsessed with the actress whose portrait his mother destroyed in the late 80s. His obsession with Gemma Turner has led him to the film L’Etrange Lune, which allegedly no one has been allowed to see, except for a select group of 75 individuals who view it every ten years. The film is particularly strange because each showing contains new footage of Gemma, which should be impossible.

When I picked this up, I was expecting something similar to Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Silver Nitrate, but apart from the use of film and love of movies, these are quite different reading experiences. This felt like quite a long read, and while I was quite interested in the mystery of it all, I did not particularly like any of the characters and did not gel particularly well with the writing. This is certainly genre-bending, though it spends a lot of time feeling like women’s fiction sprinkled with fantasy and historical fiction. I found a lot of Gemma’s storyline understandable but frustrating and I felt she spent a lot of the time actively not growing, and I thought Christopher toed the line of unbearable for a large swath of time and often found myself agreeing with his friends and family about his unhealthy and alienating obsessive tendencies. I didn’t enjoy Sayers’ prose, though I think a lot of this was also because I didn’t really feel like she trusted me as a reader.

The Star and the Strange Moon felt really messy while reading, and while I think it all pulls together in an interesting way, I found the ultimate end both logical and unsatisfying. Seeing so many people tag this as horror and reading the synopsis definitely gave me expectations of horror elements but it was rather devoid of them. I also hadn’t been anticipating the romance, though again, by the end I felt like it did naturally point to this conclusion. I think there are interesting things happening here and it is genuinely impressive how Sayers made every bit of this book connect to the ending, and I think this will have broad appeal, especially for people who have nostalgia for old movies and find either Gemma or Christopher relatable. This ultimately didn’t work for me, though I think I maybe had the wrong expectations, and while the plot was interesting, I cared little for the rest of the world.

This book, much like the Ladies of the Secret Circus, is both a masterpiece and a disaster all rolled into one. I was hoping the two years in between the novels would have helped Sayers evolve as a writer, but sadly, this book was greatly in need of a stronger editor. Over the span of 480 pages we follow two main characters as Sayer painstakingly spells out their worlds, Gemma in the 60s and Christopher starting as a 10 year old boy in 1986, establishing a tenuous connection between the two. The story slowly progresses forward to 2011, as Christopher begins to find out more about the mystery that shrouds Gemma's disappearance, her connection to his mother (rather obvious but no one seems to get it), and the strange screenings of the film every ten years. (OK duh.. she's obviously trapped in the movie how does the world at large not realize this. Ha!)

At times this book was highly readable and the pages flew by. At other times the book was saturated with unnecessary description and events that added little but page count to an already lengthy novel. Sometimes similar or identical world choices were used twice in the same paragraph, which drives me nuts. I mean seriously, it drives me nuts.

The set up to Gemma disappearing into her own horror film took 40% of the book, yet as the readers we all know its coming the entire time (if you read the synopsis). The foreshadowing was very heavy handed and I feel like Sayers doesn't trust her readers to ever connect their own dots. Everything must be spelled out in painstaking detail, often twice.

There is really no horror element to this story, except that it is takes place in a horror film. The descriptions are much more fantasy and trend towards young adult, so don't let the horror tag deter you from reading. The plot is complex and creative, but I found the execution and writing to be lacking. I still recommend giving this book a shot if you liked her other books or enjoy fantasy time travel mysteries, as the concept is really unique and enticing. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC. I enjoyed the opportunity to read another of Sayer's novels.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

A Witch In Time is a favorite of mine so when I saw Constance Sayers had a new book, I couldn’t wait to read it! The Star and the Strange Moon had such an interesting premise with dark and twisty fantasy elements. I loved the surprises and mystery of the story and the call back to characters from her other books. I think this author has such an interesting take on bridging together multiple timelines that feels unique and makes her stories so memorable. Thank you to Redhook Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

This is a mesmerizing, atmospheric novel. I found the plot unique and though it felt slow moving at times, that seemed to fit with the mood of the novel.

**Review will be published on my sites and socials release day!**

I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THIS ONE.

I finally finished this and it was not what I was expecting. This weird combination of curses, demons, vampires, historical, movie stars, romance, and more. I wanted it to all work together and it just…didn’t.

For the initial 40-50% I felt pretty invested. I was rolling with the slow nature and curious how things were going to start connecting. And when they did is when this book lost me. It gave me the sense of things being added to solve the plot that’s been created rather than a natural movement through the story. The random romance did not fit and for a horror book I never once found myself creeped out.

Neither of the main characters were remarkably memorable. Everything was okay. That’s the best way I could describe it unfortunately. The ending worked out well enough (though I still have some questions??). This was my first book by the author and I was really excited for it and now I’m honestly not sure what to think.

Overall audience notes:

Horror/Historical/Paranormal
Language: a little strong
Romance: closed door
Violence: moderate
Trigger/Content Warnings: substance abuse, mentions of suicide, loss of a parent, multiple deaths

This was an easy choice for me. I requested it the moment I saw it on Netgalley. I loved Ladies of the Secret Circus, and In love books about movies, particularly scary ones.
So I was unprepared for the uneven slog this novel turned out to be in reading. And subsequently finished it with very mixed impressions. Now I’m going to try to sort them for this review.
1. Way too long. Read long too, which is never great.
2. Way too many chicklit / women’s fiction vibes. Like WAY too many. No surer way to tank the book for me. The romance is tolerable, but so much of G’s perspective was just tediously girly. Which is …yeah, she’s only 22, but still…
3. Wildly overburdened with plot elements. The author had clearly gone in something like high concept via kitchen sink approach. That’s actually the plus and the minus of the novel at the same time. Overall, once you finished it and consider it in retrospect, it’s rather impressive. But while you’re in it, it often comes across as messy.
I mean, historical fiction, movie making, romance, demons, vampires, time travel, alternate realties, fantasy, magic, realism, magic realism …whew.
Kudos to the author for pulling it off but it was an effort to get there in the end.

Overall, an interesting read. Took me a long time (for me) to get through. And definitely the sort of book I appreciate more with the rearview mirror perspective than I did while reading it. Conceptually fascinating. Strange, indeed, but likely to find an audience. Thanks Netgalley.

Gemma Turner, a famed actress, disappeared without a trace one day on set in 1968. Where did she go? What happened to her? Why was she never found? These questions and more haunt young Christopher Kent, who finds himself part of a secret group that views Gemma's last movie every ten years. The only thing is, the movie changes each time, and it looks like Gemma is somehow filming new scenes, some 40+ years later.

First things first: this is the longest novel in human history. Proust, you had a good run my dude, but Constance Sayers has officially taken over. This book is looooooong, both in page count and in sheer slog to get through it. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing? If you like a ton of detail and character interactions that aren't necessary to the plot? Alas, this is not my preferred vibe. Don't get me wrong, I love chunky books, but I feel like the length of this one was wildly unnecessary.

This is classified as a horror novel, but it's more like historical fiction with sprinkles of horror and fantasy. The novel is dual-POV, we read from Gemma's perspective as well as Christopher's, though they do eventually (emphasis on eventually) sort of converge. The story overall is interesting, but not interesting enough to justify the length, and I found the wrap up to be a bit disappointing? I'm not sure why exactly, I just wanted more after all the time I invested.

Overall, there's nothing wrong with this book, but I think you'll enjoy it more if you go into it knowing that it's a long, slow pace, and more historical than horror. Thank you to Booksparks, Redhook, and NetGalley for my advance physical and digital copies!

(Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.)

The Star & the Strange Moon by Constance Sayers has has such a spooky, interesting premise: a man named Christopher has been drawn to a famous actress who mysteriously disappeared years ago, in the midst of acting a scene on film. In the decades since, the woman has appeared in a revised version of the original film that only a small, secret group of people are invited to—including Christopher, eventually—and no one knows how, or why, etc. This book starts off so strong & compelling—I was so excited about where it was going—& then the ending gets more wobbly for me. But I think the way the author captures Gemma’s 1960s life, her career ambitions & her relationship with a rocker, are so fun & captivating, & I loved the initial unraveling of the mystery.

4⭐️. Out 11/14.

I absolutely loved Constance Sayers first two books and I was so excited to be able to read this on early courtesy of NetGalley and Redbook books. This book is fantastic. Don't skip it and don't skip this author.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was an excellent thriller, and I enjoyed the mystery. I thought the reasoning behind why Gemma was stuck in her last film was a little predictable, but the connection between her and Chris was something that was well-written and a great twist. I hate when an author inserts a twist just to have a "shocking" moment. The plot twist in this novel was done with finesse and in a way that made sense without detracting from the novel. There is a light love scene in this book, but I would say it's more of a closed-door scene.

There could have been a little bit more development for me on Thierry and Manon. I felt like fleshing out their relationship more would have made more sense later on. There was also mention that the chateau where they're filming is haunted, but that never actually plays into the story anywhere. I suspect it was meant to be a red herring of sorts, but to me, it just felt like a loose thread. The author could have taken that whole part out, and it wouldn't have changed the story at all.

Overall, this is a great fall read with some edge-of-your-seat drama and a mystery you'll be begging to solve.

This is a a wonderful little novel about the absolute magic of cinema. I loved the original plot as I never saw this kind of story before. The pacing and the characters were so well done. The writing was evocative and beautiful, a pleasure to read and enjoy. The two narratives were weaved together perfectly. I truly liked spending a moment with this book, a cozy read for the fall season.

This was a great read! Loved the fantasy elements of this book and how they worked with the plot and the characters. I loved the mystery and horror elements present in this book. They both really worked on creating suspense throughout the book. I loved the plot for this one and how it developed. It was interesting and atmospheric from the first page grabbing my attention and keeping me hooked till the end. Loved the characters and how they helped in the development of the story. This book was strange, quirky, and suspenseful mixing a lot of popular and entertaining genres like horror, fantasy, and thrillers, together to create a very interesting story! Definitely recommend giving this one a read if you want an atmospheric horror/thriller book with fantasy elements!

The first part of this book had me burning up with heartbreak and outrage, possibly heightened by my reading it at the Aries Full Moon🌙🔥 but I was glad it shifted even though it maintains a thread of shadowy wickedness throughout. Constance Dayers is a beautiful writer and master of dual timelines. She brilliantly wove this tale with mystique, dark elements of human nature, intrigue and love. Bonus, I’m visiting Paris in just a few weeks and was thrilled by the parts that took place in France! 🇫🇷

Thank you so much Net Galley and Redhook for an Arc in exhange for an honest review.

Out the gate 5 stars. This book blew me away. Like holy shit why is it so good? I'm still thinking about it and I should really really be studying.

Anyways, TSSM and you should all read it!!!

1. the idea was so smart. Like I feel like we've all seen the premise and we've all talked about what we would do if we were trapped in a movie, and while this movie did that it also did so much more with that concept. I really like the way that Constance Sayers set up the pacing for this book by giving everything a really proper build up and connection to the trapping, nothing that is mentioned is just mentioned, she really created a cohesive and clue filled plot to piece together Gemma and Christopher's stories.

2. I couldn't put the book down. The first 20% were sort of rough for me just because there was a lot of world building and contextualization, and I wanted to stop reading but I've noticed that the books that have that world building are always so so amazing and so I stuck with it. And I'm glad that I did because once I got passed that first leg I was tied to it. I couldn't stop reading.

3. the supernatural element was so interesting in this book, because I really feel like it could've gone anyway in terms of what caused the disappearance. But when you find out what it is, it's so so good and smart and it plays on a lot of old cinematic tropes which I think is so perfect considering the subject matter.

4. the writing was so lovely. I feel like a lot of books that go big don't really have that charm of elevated and beautiful writing, and TSSM had really nice writing. It was enthralling and sort of lulled you onwards.

This is a tale of ambition, obsession, coupled with the mystery and magic of film. The Star and the Strange Moon tells the story of actress Gemma Turner, who disappears on the set of a horror film in 1968 and is never seen again, and film student Christopher Kent, who is haunted by one of film history’s greatest mysteries and sets out to discover the truth.
Gemma was offered what she considered her big break on a new film, but the director is strange and the story line incomprehensible. When Gemma disappears in a back alley, she discovers she has somehow entered the film and the monsters are coming alive. The only way she can survive is to stay ahead of the story and act her part perfectly.
Chris Kent is trying to put the clues together ...will he be in time to save Gemma?

The Star and the Strange Moon is different from books that I typically read, but I really enjoyed it. It would be great for people who like thriller, horror, or mystery or who want to try out those kinds of genres.