Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

Lucy longs to meet Shadow, a graffiti artist whose art Lucy loves.  She's sure someone who can create the pictures Shadow does is sure to be her soul mate.  On the last day of year 12, Lucy and her friends meet up with Ed and his friends.  Lucy doesn't like Ed very much, but the boys say they know Shadow, and they'll try to help Lucy find him.

Graffiti Moon was released in Australia in 2010, and it's now being released in the U.S.  I do so like reading books that aren't based in America or England.  It's good to shake thing up a bit.  I enjoyed reading about how school was over and it's October and it super hot out and people talk about going to uni.

The book itself was very sweet.  There were no surprises, but it was a nice romantic story of two people really getting to know each other over the course of one long evening, letting go of preconceived notions and realizing they care about each other.


I'm not giving anything away, I swear, by telling you that Ed is Shadow.  You find out on like page two.  So you, the reader, don't have to wonder for long who these Shadow and Poet characters are.  Poet is Ed's best friend, Leo, who writes poetry to go with Ed's art.  Ed dropped out of school, mostly because he can hardly read and write.  Ed has some kind of learning disability, and he's clearly very smart and very talented, but he doesn't think much of himself.  He paints to express himself, something he can't do very well in words.

Lucy and Ed split off from the rest of their friends and continue "searching" for Shadow.  Ed takes Lucy to all different places around town to see his art, and begins to hope that she'll realize it's him, while all the time worrying that once she knows it's him she won't want Shadow any more.  Lucy, meanwhile, is starting to fall for Ed and begins to realize how running after some idealized version of someone she's never met is silly.

There's a slide plot going that Leo owes a rather nasty guy money, and in order to get it the boys have agreed to take part in robbing their school of computers.  Ed is reluctant but agrees, and as the hour of the robbery approaches, he worries more and more what Lucy would think if she found out.

There was actually a minute toward the end that I thought, "Wait, are things not going to end happily ever after?  What the hell?"  But then, thankfully, everything worked out just fine, just like it should.

So yes, very sweet and I enjoyed reading it.


Graffiti Moon comes out February 14, 2012.