The Blue Girl

Written by Laurie Foos

Narrated by Jean Ann Douglass

A blue girl lives in the woods, eating secrets baked into moon pies and shaking up a small lakeside town. In this small lakeside town, mothers bake their secrets into moon pies they feed to a silent blue girl. Their daughters have secrets too—that they can’t sleep, that they might sleep with a neighbor boy, that they know more than they let on. But when the daughters find the blue girl, everyone’s carefully held silences shake loose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Productions
• Release date: Sep 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781094412801

Laurie Foos

Laurie Foos is the author of Ex Utero, Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist, Twinship, Bingo Under the Crucifix, Before Elvis There Was Nothing, and The Giant Baby. She teaches in the low residency MFA program at Lesley University and in the low residency BFA program at Goddard College. She lives on Long Island with her husband and two children. Visit her website at www.lauriefoos.net.

Reviews for The Blue Girl

[Celia Chasey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very mysterious but yet I could relate the womens feelings very deeply. i will recommend this book to friends

[Connie Hough · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Confusing, crazy and boring , not my kind of book.

[Jamila Sids · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Disjointed, boring, did not cummerbund what was going on. Dnf

[Natale Michaud · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was hard to get into this strange story. The narrator is good though, so I didn't quit. It didn't get better.

[AJ · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This was the most unconnected bit of rambling that I have had the misfortune to listen to. Moon pies, blue girl, none of it made any sense or had any rhyme or reason. Please do not waist your time! Life is to short

[NC KONNECT · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a captivating book. Mysterious with lots of whimsy, yet all too realistically relatable. Definitely worth your time.

[Melinda Wortman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hard to understand, hard to get through. Maybe it’s just me?

[Karen Chandler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Different storyline with the soft back story written in of the effects of children and adults living with handicapped children. The feelings you get with stares of people. The love they give you and sacrifices made. It is written in an interesting way. I an glad I read this book.

[Becky Perkins Childress · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This was a nonsensical book with no redeeming qualities. I want my 6 hours back.

[Evelyn Spaghetti · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Excruciatingly terrible pretentious . Fails to deliver. Nope . .

[Calen Brandt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Probably the weirdest book I've read so far, even after Shutter Island. I appreciate the science aspect but the missed the mark on genetics. Obviously fragile X is inherited from the mother since male children inherite a Y chromosome from their father. And yes, Rebecca is possibly a carrier and should be tested before having children of her own.

Everyone is sad and the adults act like children and the children act like adults and then there is this mysterious being that appears to be a girl with glowing blue skin but is she even real? So weird.

I really liked following along with each character and would have given 5 stars if it wasn't for the mistake about the chromosomes. Great for a quick distraction!

[Sheena Gurbakhash · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This story is about as nutritiously empty as a Mon pie. Looks great and you think you really want it but it just end up cloying and leaving you slightly sick.

Yes, the narration is beautiful. The writing is lyrical and seems so full of insight but at heart this is a story about 3 unhappy women and their equally unhappy families.
We never find out:
Why the girl is blue or even if that matters. She could have been purple or green except maybe blue girl sounds lyrical and cool.
Why she eats the moon pies. Doesn't sound like the most nutritionally sound choice for someone who is sick
Who the old woman is
What are these great secrets that are baked into the moon pies
Are there no doctors in this town?
Are there no therapists?
Maybe this story has some great metaphorical meaning that escapes me entirely. It just rambled on and on while you waited for anything to happen.... Ok it did in the end but that was just too little, too late.

[Leah Barton Tew · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This should have and could have been so much better. Unfortunately, too many plot points didn’t make sense, didn’t have a purpose, or didn’t add anything to the book. In the end it just left me thinking “what the heck was that book about?!”

[Mary Rose · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very atmospheric and heady and highly metaphorical… I struggled to keep up with who was who (each chapter is a different character). I think it was good, but I also must admit that even though it was only a few hours I found it hard to get through.

[Sarah Gerard · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Weird but cool. Loved the narration and her voice yes

[Deborah Shoman Zirbel · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This was a very strange story. Not my type of book.

[Lora Strosnider · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am sure if you are into fantasy you’ll love this book. While the writing style was enjoyable the storyline was not for me.

[Lauren Hargrove · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Interesting- got through the whole book- just wasn’t a fan.

[Fallon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If I was clever enough to understand this book I think it would be 5 stars. It felt like it should have been but all the unsaid stuff/metaphors just went over my head.

[rivercityreading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The mothers should have jumped as soon as they saw the blue girl floating in the small town’s lake. But it was Audrey, the quiet daughter, who went after her first. In the weeks following the accident, the blue girl sits alone and silent in her room, willing and able to eat secrets the mothers bake into moon pies made to help them feel some degree of control in their increasingly unpredictable worlds.

It’s no wonder that small towns, distant teenagers, and family secrets pepper the plot lines of so many novels, as fiction parallels so many of our lives. But it can also be hard to make these stories distinct. Foos strikes a brilliant balance in acknowledging common similarities while also infusing her novel with overarching themes and big questions, all wrapped up in her fantastical blue girl.

“I remember lying on the beach that afternoon, looking at Audrey while trying at the same time not to look because I knew if she caught me she’d turn away. I remember wondering if I had been that way with my own mother once, always distant, always trying to disappear, always dismissing her, she who had held me in her womb and squeezed me out. How ungrateful we all once were, we daughters who become mothers only to learn how it feels, the endless cycle of rejection. I remember thinking about my mother that day, wishing I could tell her how sorry I was.”

The Blue Girl is told from the alternating perspectives of six narrators—three mothers and their daughters. Rather than feeling tangled, as the technique sometimes can, the different perspectives give us varied insight into the blue girl and the secrets she’s fed: a husband post-breakdown, a fragile son trapped in the mind of a child, and children sneaking off in the night. Though the oddity of baking secrets into moon pies may seem outlandish on the surface, it’s an incredibly compelling and compassionate vessel for a concept painfully familiar to many of us.

More at rivercityreading.com