Laughing Down the Moon by Eva Indigo

Laughing Down the Moon
by Eva Indigo
Pages: 220
Date: December 16 2013
Publisher: Bella Books
Series: None

Review
Rating: 5.5
Read: October 26 to 27 2016
I found this book off of a list, the Funny Lesbian Romance books list.

Unexpectedly – I use that word both because I had not heard of this author before, and because of the rating it had before I rated it (I think it was somewhere down near 3.5 something), I found that I really enjoyed this book. It was a sliver from actually being ‘perfect’. Couple things kept it from that designation though.

Reasons for not perfect:
1) The ending was a little . . . much. Not exactly sure how to describe what I mean. I suppose the ending is perfect-ish if you think of the book as a slice of life-‘woman working through issues’ type of book instead of a romance. So this isn’t really a negative so much as an indication of what type of book this actually was. plus, I kept expecting that the cat who seemed to be following Allura around would end up near her or on her at the end – I mean, she did start the book basically fearing and hating cats, and ended up somewhere not fearing and hating cats – and the book did end with her sitting outside on the ground, so it’d have been a perfect opportunity to show a little tiny extra bit of growth if she openly acknowledged her change by having the cat near – shown she had grown as a person. But no cat.

2) The main character is/was largely anti-cat. Feared them. That’s a little tough to move past.

3) I mentioned this in 1 – but this book is not perfect as a romance, but closer to perfect if the book was/is supposed to be seen as a slice of life-woman dealing with/overcoming issues type of book. I say that for many reasons but I’ll just say, here and now, that the book was more about Allura dealing with herself, her family, her ex-girlfriend, her ‘funk’, her career, and – to an extent, dealing with the concept of letting herself have a new girlfriend – while Shiloh was kind of off to the side . . . there. That specific aspect isn’t helped by having the story completely from Allura’s point of view.

Right, so – Allura’s a writer, of Japanese-Irish descent, has two sisters (one older, one younger – heh, I just realized this book actually was focused on the middle child when so many seem to be focused on the oldest) and is in something of a ‘funk’. Oh, and is a pagan. She is attempting to get out of this ‘funk’ by doing certain things – like taking a new class, getting a pet (something along the lines of – ‘getting the neediest pet’, though the wording was slightly different than that I believe), and . . . I do not remember the third thing.

I rather liked Allura – I mean, the book sounds like it’d be depressing – a woman attempting to get past ‘issues’, dealing with whether or not she might be depressed, dealing with not actively currently liking her job (and actually kind of disliking it at the moment), and dealing with having been dumped by her girlfriend – and dealing with the issue of friends – would the friends stay with her, go with Mickey (the ex), etc. But, instead, the book was quite enjoyable. For someone in ‘the funk’ – Allura sure did do a heck of a lot of laughing and finding herself in funny situations. And I rather liked the bald bird she ended up with – Dwight Night Jr. And the antics of the two of them bonding. I even liked how Allura moved past, somewhat, her fear of cats (when I say she fears cats, I mean she literally would redirect her walking so she wouldn’t end up walking near a cat – or on the same street as a cat).

I also rather liked Shiloh, though she played a smaller role in the book than would be expected for a potential mate.

Fun, funny book. Fortunately there’s another book out there for me to read by this author – unfortunately there is only one more, and it came out more than 2 years ago.

October 27 2016