Book Review: GRAFFITI MOON by Cath Crowley

Graffiti Moon
Author: Cat Crowley
Published: August 1st 2010
Publisher: Pan McMillan Australia
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary Romance

Summary | Add to TBR

"Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers."

It’s the end of Year 12. Lucy’s looking for Shadow, the graffiti artist everyone talks about.

His work is all over the city, but he is nowhere.

Ed, the last guy she wants to see at the moment, says he knows where to find him. He takes Lucy on an all-night search to places where Shadow’s thoughts about heartbreak and escape echo around the city walls.

But the one thing Lucy can’t see is the one thing that’s right before her eyes.

My Thoughts:

Mum says when wanting collides with getting, that's the moment of truth. I want to collide. I want to run right into Shadow and let the force spill our thoughts so we can pick each other up and pass each other back like piles of shiny stones.

There are books that are easy to read and love but very hard to rate. This book is one of those. It's the kind of book that I like to read again but not wanting to review. Not because it wasn't good, actually it's the opposite and I really enjoyed it. It's just hard to write your feelings about a book that is so full of emotions. Graffiti Moon isn't a perfect book. It doesn't have a perfect love story. It doesn't have a happily-ever-after just like in fairy tales but it doesn't have a sad ending either. This book made me hope for something good to happen, it made me look at the good things behind the bad, and the happy things behind the sad ones. So why is it hard to rate this book? Because even though it's a beautiful story, there are times that I wanted to skip some lines because I just wanted to know the next scene. The pacing isn't slow but maybe I was just too excited to see the what will happen next, I don't know. But why did I give it a 5? Simply because for me, this book doesn't deserve any less. I love the characters, I enjoyed the one-night setting of the story, I like how the complications gave thrill in the love story of Ed and Lucy. The supporting characters and the variation of their personalities even made this book a lot of fun to read. And though I find the place and the setting a little sad, it gives hope and dreams to the characters. This book isn't perfect, but it made me feel.

I guess love's kind of like a marshmallow in a microwave on high. After it explodes it's still a marshmallow. But, you know, now it's a complicated marshmallow.

Characters. I can't love a book if I hate the characters and I think that's one of the reason why I love Graffiti Moon. Meet Shadow and Poet. Think about these two boys--one painting graffiti arts around the city walls and the other writing poems about them. Their arts are one of the best in the city but no one knows their real names. Then there's Lucy who once broke a guy's nose because he grabbed her arse on their first date, a girl who doesn't date ever since, a girl who thinks she can only fall for a guy like Shadow--a guy who thinks art is cool. And then they meet and he's there right in front of her face. And sometimes you can't see what's in front of you when you're busy looking for something else. 

In the story, I also see true friendship. I see true friendships. I see real relationships. I think that made this book so appealing to me. There is no annoying character, and I really appreciate that. There are two lovers who can't seem to get rid of each other though one of them throw eggs to his girl's head, and the girl constantly calling him an idiot. There's Jazz, Lucy's psychic bestfriend who loves lollipops and fall for a guy who writes and recites poems and who can eat sausage rolls in 30 seconds. They are funny, smart, talented. They're so entertaining to read about.

If you treat glass right, it doesn't crack. If you know the properties, you can make things; the color of dusk and night and love. But you can't control people like that and I really, really wish you could. I want the world to be glass.

There is something in the story and the characters altogether that made this book whole. It's a remarkable story, a bittersweet romance, a compelling journey of two people (and some) towards something that is unknown yet hopeful at the same time. Graffiti Moon will be hard to forget and it will stay in my memory for a very long time. I love this book and I think art is cool.

“For a while, for as long as you're looking at it, that painting is the world and you get to be in it.”

My Rating: