Twelve Moons: The most beautiful and inspiring memoir you’ll read

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Unfortunately the more personal side of the book fell really flat on me and I just felt really sad that the person spent their life escaping from perceived pressure, anxiety and mental strain.

Perhaps this is the point, and that is what Giles is trying to step away from, but every time she brought him up it felt like the antithesis to the feminine strength and independence the book was meant to be cheerleading. I actually moved away from the North East in the middle of reading this, and found myself so racked with homesickness for the wild coastlines of Northumberland, that I ended up putting it down for five months before I had the strength to pick it up again. Over the course of the year, the moon becomes her fellow traveller through dark times, and companion through joyful ones and even when the sky is wreathed in cloud, the moon is still felt in the pull of the tides.In fact, the calm and chaos of their lives mirror the ebb and flow of the tides and the lunar cycle beautifully. I know life isn’t always happy resolutions from personal troubles, but I still wanted that from this kind of book.

Bound by circumstance, financial constraints, illness and the challenges of single motherhood, she has nowhere to go but the fierce landscape that surrounds her. Considering the moon phases over the course of the year is something I had never consciously done before. Set over the course of a year and charting her life as a single parent raising her four daughters, Twelve Moons is a stunning debut novel. Compounding this was the fact that every positive element to the book was immediately followed by some deeply morose emotion or thought that made it quite hard to read at times. However, that being said, considering this is Giles' first book, Twelve Moons is a debut masterpiece.Navigating single parenthood, advocating from her girls and herself - an endless battle to be heard - is isolating and exhausting. I told her that reading memoirs like this make me feel less alone, in sisterhood with others who tread the wild pathways too. How important it was to find that familiar glow, sometimes in amongst deep cloud, sometimes a bright summer night sky. There are plenty of us out there, raising anxious, poorly, neurodivergent children; dealing with schools, agencies and well meaning people who just don’t understand. Each child has their own quirks and individuality, but there are also complications with physical and mental health.

No woman should be so defined by her relationship with a man that four years later, she still can't bear to think of him. The challenges of bringing up a young family in isolated Northumberland are laid bare with brutal and heart-rending honesty. Throughout the quiet turn of each month she charts the sea swimming, rock pool immersing, hill running to calm her busy brain, and of nature weaving it’s magic, grounding, nurturing and holding the whole family safe as she reclaims herself from the sadness and scars left by shattered hopes; rediscovering and unearthing the woman concealed by motherhood.Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). The presentation of the book is absolutely stunning, both the cover artwork and title are beautiful. A delicately-handled, lyrical exploration of divorce, recovery of self and fierce maternal devotion.