When World’s Collide

Beyond The Moon by Catherine Taylor is the most marvellous timeslip novel that has lodged in my heart and soul.

The novel is set in 1916 and 2017 with a thin veil between the two. The reader is enthralled as we swap modern life for life during the middle of World War I.

The present day action is set in a crumbling building that is a mental asylum. Its methods and cruelty are something out of Dickens. It is against this backdrop that a patient longs for escape. In contrast a soldier with temporary blindness in 1916 is treated with love and care as he recuperates in hospital.

The reader alternates between the two time periods as we ‘live’ through the novel as Louisa. We ‘feel’ her despair and heartache, her desperate longing and her love. It is a love that will do whatever it takes to protect those she loves.

Catherine Taylor has captured the dreadful horror that is World War I in France. The reader witnesses the soldiers being used as cannon fodder on the battlefields. The conditions in the trenches and the field hospitals are dreadful. The latter seem to be blood baths for saw bones. We also cross behind the lines and get a glimpse of the enemy.

The characters are wonderfully drawn, realistic and likable. I found myself cheering them onwards with a hope filled heart for what I hoped would follow.

Catherine Taylor’s plotline was well thought out and executed. Beyond The Moon was a simply cracking novel. I stumbled upon it by accident via an Amazon ad on my Facebook feed – boy am I glad I did. Beyond The Moon is one of the best books I have ever read. I absolutely loved and lived it.

JULIA WILSON