Lucy Cuthew captures truths about high school life in “Blood Moon”

“Blood Moon” by Lucy Cuthew is a heartwarming story about the truths of periods, sex, shame, love, and the harsh reality about being a teenager in high school. 

Frankie is an average high school student with a love for astronomy. After school one day, Frankie has her first sexual experience with a fellow student, Benjamin, and gets her period. Both Benjamin and herself say it’s only blood. Nothing to worry about, it’s normal. But apparently there’s a lot to worry about. Not too long after, a disrespectful, gross meme gets released around the school and all of a sudden, Frankie is at the center of everyone’s attention. How will Frankie be able to pick herself up? Will she be able to stand up against a culture that says periods are gross, or will she crumble under the harassment? 

“Blood Moon” is definitely going on my top favorite list. This book was well written, and perfectly portrayed what a lot of high school-aged girls are going through. Throughout the book, Lucy Cuthew used references to astronomy that helped provide a different feel of things. This book also only took me two days to read, which I loved because not only was it easy to understand and remember all of the pieces, but it also didn’t feel like a burden, as many other longer books do.

Something the author does well with this book, is the way she sets it up. At the beginning of some chapters, she labels them with a day of the week. This was very helpful, because it’s then easier to understand when everything is happening and what events happened during each day. 

This book was not written in the same way as other books. The words on each page were set up in stanzas, kind of like in a poem. This did help split off the chapters and events, and made it so this book was a short, easy read. But, there were spots in the book where I had to read it over twice, because it didn’t make sense the first time. 

I would recommend “Blood Moon” to people 14 year olds and up. This book is not suitable for younger readers, as they might not understand everything that is happening. Older readers, like adults can read this book, but it does have some topics, like life as a teenager, and life as a high schooler, that might not interest them. 

If I had to give this book a rating out of 5 stars, I would give it a 5 out of 5.

–Jan 4, 2021–