Graffiti Moon - Cath Crowley

Graffiti Moon – Cath Crowley

Pages: 257

Publisher: Knoph

Release Date: 14^th February 2012

Edition: US hardback

Other Titles by this Author: A Little Wanting Song

Senior year is over, and Lucy has the perfect way to celebrate: tonight she’s going to find Shadow, the mysterious graffiti artist whose work appears all over the city. Somewhere in the darkness, he’s out there, spraying colour, spraying birds and blue sky on the night. And Lucy knows that a guy who paints like Shadow is someone she could fall for – really fall for.

The last person Lucy wants to spend this night with is Ed, the guy she’s managed to avoid since punching him in the nose on the most awkward date of her life. But when Ed tells Lucy he might know where to find Shadow, the two of them embark on an all-night search to places where Shadow’s pieces of heartbreak and escape echo off the city walls. And what Lucy can’t see is the one thing that’s right before her eyes.

From Cath Crowley comes an exhilarating adventure set against a moonlit cityscape – one night of art and poetry, humour and longing, anticipation and risk, and (maybe) love.

Graffiti Moon is one of those books which have been praised left, right and centre in the blogging world in a way that put my expectations impossibly high.

Cath Crowley’s prose is beautiful, flowing and incredibly poetic. The images that she creates with her words are breath-taking and I’m pretty convinced that she could make a shopping list sound pretty. Cath Crowley captures the beauty and artfulness in everything; from riding a bike down a hill to looking at a piece of art to thinking about a boy.

Not only is Graffiti Moon written beautifully, the characters are wonderful. Each of them is vividly and individually portrayed. There is a mixture of the wacky, the worrying, the adorable, the questionable and the loyal, just like in life. If you’re lucky, that is. They’re such a integral part of Ed ad Lucy’s story that they are not secondary characters at all and play equally important roles in the events of one night in Melbourne.

One of the things that I loved most about Graffiti Moon was the emphasis on art. I’m a big art fan; I even used to be fairly decent at it (an A at GCSE, thank you very much!), so when it has a presence in a YA novel it really makes me smile. But what’s special about the art in Graffiti Moon is that it’s not traditional art; it is mainly graffiti (obviously) and glass-blowing. Now, I love a good piece of graffiti, it really is art – I’m especially fond of lots of the pieces around Brighton; they’re brilliant. Glass-blowing is something that I sadly don't have very much experience with. I have seen it being done, however, and I was captivated. I love the idea of science and artistic talent coming together to create something individual and completely spectacular.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed Graffiti Moon, the ridiculous hype did take and edge off that I think would have made it for me. Saying that, I’m definitely eager to get my hands on A Little Wanting Song.

For my 2012 Contemporary YA Challenge

Sophie