Review: Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig (audio)

Title:Ginny Moon

Author:Benjamin Ludwig

Narrator:Em Eldridge

Published:May 2017, Harlequin Audio

Length:9 hours 1 minute

Source:Library

Told in an
extraordinary and wholly unique voice that will candidly take you into
the mind of a curious and deeply human character.

For the first
time in her life, Ginny Moon has found her “forever home”—a place where
she’ll be safe and protected, with a family that will love and nurture
her. It’s exactly the kind of home that all foster kids are hoping for.
So why is this 14-year-old so desperate to get kidnapped by her abusive,
drug-addict birth mother, Gloria, and return to a grim existence of
hiding under the kitchen sink to avoid the authorities and her mother’s
violent boyfriends?

While Ginny is pretty much your average
teenager—she plays the flute in the school band, has weekly basketball
practice and studies Robert Frost poems for English class—she is
autistic. And so what’s important to Ginny includes starting every day
with exactly nine grapes for breakfast, Michael Jackson, bacon-pineapple
pizza and, most of all, getting back to Gloria so she can take care of
her baby doll.

Ginny Moon is a compulsively readable and
touching novel about being an outsider trying to find a place to belong
and making sense of a world that just doesn’t seem to add up.

My thoughts:Every once in a while you read a book that you know will just stay with you for a long time – whether it’s a particular character or the storyline or the setting…this is that book and for me, it’s the main character, Ginny Moon. I loved her and know that she will be forever imprinted in my heart and I thank Benjamin Ludwig for writing this charming and heartfelt book about this little girl who may be different, but is just trying to find her place and make sense of this scary place we call our world.

I loved that this whole book was told from Ginny’s perspective – I don’t think this book would have had the same impact had it not. Ginny has autism, but she is charming and quirky and utterly and fastastically loveable! She 100% captured my heart. She has had a tough life up to this point – she was taken out of an abusive home only to be placed with multiple foster carefamilies until finally being placed with her “forever family.” But things aren’t as settled as she would like and this is where things so awry. 

Ginny is a problem solver in her own right. She has her own way of working out problems and we see that first-hand. Often-times this gets her into trouble, but this is true to her character. 

All the characters introduced in this book were so dynamic, despite being seen through the eyes of Ginny. They were all flawed characters and that’s what made them seem so genuine and realistic. There were times that I despised one or two of the characters due to their actions, especially her Forever Mom, despite the fact that she may have been acting out of fear. But again, this was all coming from Ginny’s perspective – we saw everything from a 14-year’s eyes!

This book is one that I would have everyone read – it’s so well-written and so moving. It really takes you into the world of this young girl and shows you that really, all she wants is to be loved for who she is and don’t we all want that? 

Audio thoughts:I loved listening to this book and I thought that Em Eldridge did a fantastic job bringing Ginny to life. Her voice and inflections were just right – not too babyish, not too old – just perfect! Or as Ginny would say “not approximately but exactly!”