Goodnight June. Finished audio 11-20-15, rating 4.25/5, fiction, pub. 2014

Unabridged audio read by Katherine Kellgren. 8.5 hours.

Goodnight Moon is an adored childhood classic, but its real origins are lost to history. In Goodnight June, Sarah Jio offers a suspenseful and heartfelt take on how the “great green room” might have come to be.

June Andersen is professionally successful, but her personal life is marred by unhappiness. Unexpectedly, she is called to settle her great-aunt Ruby’s estate and determine the fate of Bluebird Books, the children’s bookstore Ruby founded in the 1940s. Amidst the store’s papers, June stumbles upon letters between her great-aunt and the late Margaret Wise Brown—and steps into the pages of American literature.

This was a sweet, charming story of second chances. Jane, a NYC banker, has all of the professional success she could ever want and yet when her aunt’s bookstore comes into her possession she realizes that so much has been missing.  She goes home to Seattle to confront the life she ran away from and little by little her resistance fades.

Most of us love bookstores (why would you be reading this otherwise?) so this story is one easy to fall in love with since it full of books, dreams and history.  I would love to inherit a children’s bookstore like Bluebird Books!  And this isn’t just any bookstore, it has hosted many an author and wealthy patron.  Jane finds that her Aunt Ruby has left her a scavenger hunt to find the answers to things that she hadn’t even thought to ask.  How did her Aunt Ruby know Margaret Wise Brown and did her aunt really contribute to Goodnight Moon?

There was so much to like about this book, even if you aren’t a fan of the children’s classic Goodnight Moon (one of the beloved classics I’ve never cared for (gasp!!)).  There were so many strong, flawed, independent women and I was rooting for them all.

I did feel that it was too simplistic in a few places, but I still really liked it.