Longlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize 2019A strange twist of fate connects a British soldier fighting in the First World War in 1916 and a young woman living in modern-day England a century later, in this haunting literary time travel novel.Two people, two battles: one against the invading Germans on the battlefields of 1916 France, the other against a substandard, uncaring mental health facility … substandard, uncaring mental health facility in modern-day England. Part war story, part timeslip, part love story – and at the same time a meditation on the themes of war, mental illness, identity and art, Beyond The Moon is an intelligent, captivating debut novel, perfect for book clubs.
“Historical fantasy at its very best.” — Historical Novel Society”
Shortlisted for the Eharmony/Orion Love Story Prize 2019
“Taylor’s accomplished, genre-bending book succeeds as a WW1 historical novel and a beguiling, time travel love story… The sharply written narrative deftly moves back and forth between the past and present.” — Kirkus Reviews
“An unflinching portrait of the horrors of war, and a look at the torturous extremes a human soul can endure. It is a sonnet to the transformative power of love, even as it is also a criticism of the futility and pointless destructiveness of war.” — Shaylin Gandhi, author of By The Light of Embers
In 1916 1st Lieutenant Robert Lovett is a patient at Coldbrook Hall military hospital in Sussex, England. A gifted artist, he’s been wounded fighting in the Great War. Shell shocked and suffering from hysterical blindness he can no longer see his own face, let alone paint, and life seems increasingly hopeless.
A century later in 2017, medical student Louisa Casson has just lost her beloved grandmother – her only family. Heartbroken, she drowns her sorrows in alcohol on the South Downs cliffs – only to fall accidentally part-way down. Doctors fear she may have attempted suicide, and Louisa finds herself involuntarily admitted to Coldbrook Hall – now a psychiatric hospital, an unfriendly and chaotic place.
Then one day, while secretly exploring the old Victorian hospital’s ruined, abandoned wing, Louisa hears a voice calling for help, and stumbles across a dark, old-fashioned hospital room. Inside, lying on the floor, is a mysterious, sightless young man, who tells her he was hurt at the Battle of the Somme, a WW1 battle a century ago. And that his name is Lieutenant Robert Lovett…
For fans of Kate Quinn, Sebastian Faulks, Diana Gabaldon, Ken Follett, Beatriz Williams, Kristin Hannah, Susanna Kearsley and Paullina Simons.
*NB Contains graphic descriptions of war violence and injuries, as well as profanity and mild sex.
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A good book but the ending was absolutely disappointing. With Time travel books it’s important to be able to illustrate the emotional impact by means of proof revealing the secret to the closest charactor and friend and to finally to be believed that the time traveler came from another century. This book did not do that
Lovely and unique. A love that spans time and enough history to make this WWI nerd’s heart flutter.
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.
When a tumble down an eroding cliff face in the dark of night lands Louisa in A&E, the doctors determine that she is a danger to herself and admit her to Coldbrook Hall, a psychiatric facility, and put her on suicide watch.
Louisa is a former medical student and so hopes that if she can show them that she is not a risk to herself, that there has been some misunderstanding then she will be released. When she realizes that no one is going to believe her and the facility is too understaffed to care about individual patients, she knows that she has to keep her wits about her and her head above water.
When she learns there is a way to sneak away and into a closed and condemned ward of the hospital, used during the First World War for recovering British soldiers, she somehow stumbles upon a soldier recovering from his injuries. She is confused and shocked, but no more so than when she tries to show her friend ony for there to be no evidence of him ever having been there.
Her days then revolve around getting away and spending time with him. They gradually get closer, but how can they ever be together if she is only ever a visitor in the past, real only to him?
What follows is a beautiful and complex love story and an insight into the horrors of the new kind of war that soldiers had to face during World War I.
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This book, my god. I learned about this book in a recommendation email from NetGalley and I am so glad that I received the email. This is one of the most unique books that I have read for quite a while.
This book is told from two seperate first-person narrations, Louisa’s and Robert’s. Two life stories being told simultaneously and coming together. Sometimes dual narrations can make a story clunky, but it really worked for this book and truly the only way I think this story would have worked.
The author has a great voice and did such an amazing job with descriptive detailing that the parts of the story taking place in 1917 felt just as real and tangible to me as the parts of the story taking place in 2017.
I’ll be completely honest I almost called it quits on this book when Louisa and Robert lost contact at about the midway point because I was worried that the rest of the book was just going to detail the seperate tragic endings for both of them. But I decided to have faith in where the story was taking me and keep reading. I’m so glad I did because the time apart and the journeys they both had to endure made the story so much more powerful. I loved this book more than I can express. I am astounded that this is the first book that Catherine Taylor has published. I am looking forward to more books from this author.
I saw some people comparing it to Outlander. And although it does involve a woman capable of traveling forward and backward through time, I found Beyond the Moon and the Outlander series to be quite unique from one another. They are both lovely and have a completely different voice from one another.
Many thanks to NetGalley’s AuthorBuzz and The Cameo Press Ltd for recommending this book to me via email and sharing an electronic copy with me for reviewing purposes. I voluntarily read this book and this is my honest review.
This book is for fans of historical fiction, time travel/timeslip, and romance.
Louisa lives in the present, 2017 to be exact. Life has been hard and she has just lost her grandmother and ends up in a psychiatric hospital by mistake due to the ineffective doctors. Robert lives in 1915 and is an artist but has a strong sense of duty to his country and serves in the military. By some weird fluke, Louisa ends up back in 1915-16 and meets Robert who is recovering from some injuries. What neither expects is to find the love of their life but only one knows what separates them….time.
For most of this book, I was more interested in Louisa’s story. The disbelief that someone in this time period could be stuck in a psychiatric hospital and basically ignores her explanations of what happened is shocking. And the hospital that she is in is like something from the 1950s. There are a bunch of extreme cases, the nurses don’t seem to care, and the doctors must be filling some sort of quota and appear to only care about prescribing drugs that may be ineffective for the patient. It helps Louisa that she was previously in med school before her grandmother died. On the flip side, one would think that studying medicine and working on cadavers would toughen a person up so that when having to work on live patients it is no big deal. Of course, it is very different to work on someone that is alive versus dead. But Louisa has moxie and is able to adapt to the past easier than some.
Robert is tough but has a sensitive side. His injuries hold him back but meeting Louisa reshapes his thought process and allows him to heal. Reading the details of the various battles and POW camps can be a tough read if you are remotely squeamish. But it gave me a better understanding of the war and what soldiers endured for freedom.
I’m not 100% sure how Louisa managed to go between the two time periods. I understand time travel but most of the books in this genre don’t have a character going back and forth in time. But it was intriguing to see how the author wove this into the story to keep the reader engaged.
The romance/love story between Robert and Louisa is one that stood the test of time. I enjoyed watching their relationship progress and while it wasn’t always easy, they made it work.
This book was very enjoyable and I had a hard time putting it down because I wanted to know what was going to happen next for Robert and Louisa.
We give this book 4 paws up.
Beyond the Moon is a beautifully written and often times heartbreaking masterpiece! The story of Louisa and Robert flows seamlessly from 1917 to 2017 and back. Catherine Taylor’s vividly descriptive writing transported me to another place in time and I loved every single page!
A lovely time-travel romance with lots of great historical detail. Romantic in a clean way, a real page-turner.
Thank you HFVBT and the author for a complimentary copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book. All opinions expressed are my own.
Beyond The Moon
By: Catherine Taylor
*REVIEW*
Beyond The Moon is a romance story with a twist-time travel. Louisa, in 2017, drinks too much and accidentally falls down a cliff. She is deemed a suicide risk and admitted to Coldbrook psychiatric hospital. This is not a place of caring. Patients are subdued with pills and cannot defend themselves. Louisa becomes aware of an abandoned wing of the hospital and begins to explore this area. It is here she meets Robert, only, he is living in 1916 and fighting in WWI. He was also a patient here. How is this possible? Can a relationship develop between two people living a century apart? This is an intriguing story with well developed characters. It definitely kept me interested and reading because of its unique premise. I have not read much time travel fiction prior to this. The author does an excellent job of weaving these two timelines together to create a cohesive story. It is evident that much research went into the story as well. On a different note, the horrible conditions in the hospital and the mistreatment of the patients is a sad reflection of actual conditions in so many institutions today. It is so heartbreaking. This problem is one to be aware of more to affect change. Overall, Beyond The Moon is a great read that I definitely recommend!
This book…oh my word, this book.
I couldn’t put it down. I found myself reading it at stoplights. It burrowed under my skin and grabbed hold of me and didn’t let go.
This is, on the surface, a time travel romance. Yet this book is so much more than that. It is also an unflinching portrait of the horrors of war, and a look at the torturous extremes a human soul can endure. It is a sonnet to the transformative power of love, even as it is also a criticism of the futility and pointless destructiveness of war.
The hero comes from a time that is as uncomplicated and honest as it is barbaric (WW1 1917), and the heroine from a sterile and isolating age full of smartphones, casual bullying and impersonal, revolving-door medical treatment (2017). When the two end up in the same place, separated by 100 years, their souls recognize one another and draw them together, even across the fabric of time.
The romantic side of me loved this. So did the medical side, AND the cynical one. It’s almost impossible to find a novel that satisfies all three, but Catherine Taylor has managed to weave a beautiful tale, filled with raw and ugly moments that only manage to make it all the more poignant.
As a previous reviewer mentioned, the characters fall in love quite fast. This is true. It also isn’t the point, and if you can accept the speed at which their feelings develop, you will uncover a gem that is so much more than “boy loves girl, girl loves boy in return.”
The writing is beautiful, even haunting, at times. Still, this book is not for the faint of heart, considering its graphic depiction of war and the bloody aftermath. But, for me, that provided a stark and important counterpoint to the sweetness and innocence of the characters’ love.
Five unqualified, well-earned stars. I highly recommend this book.
Beyond the Moon by Catherine Taylor is a lovely romance with a mix of time split/time travel between early 20th Century and the present. The graphic historical details of World War I combat, cultural, medical practices of that era are well written and described. I found the medical/psychiatric care given in 2017 less believable and brutal. The reader is drawn in and shifted between times with this unusual story and characters in original ways. What a pleasure to have been chosen to read and review this exciting new book by Catherine Taylor. I look forward to reading more by this author.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. I appreciate the opportunity and thank the author and publisher for allowing me to read, enjoy and review this book.
Time can be a funny thing, you think you have time, you think you know how to use your time well. A lost and brave woman finds that time is not what she always thought it to be in Cathrine Taylor’s book “Beyond The Moon”.
Changes in her life come to a grieving woman in completely unlooked for ways. While grief has her in its grip, she stumbles into a world that has her lose control of her freedom. Yet finding freedom, finding a new life, swoops down on her from distances she could never have dreamed of!
Taylor brings an enrapturing, part historical, story to life vividly through superb writing! Her tale enveloped me in its engaging characters and wonderfully described scenes. Switching between the lives of the characters, then tying it all together with a satisfying ending made this book one of the best I have read all year!
I highly encourage people to obtain a copy of this book to enjoy!
What a beautiful story! I admit that it took a while for me to really get into it at first. The early chapters dealing with Robert, the soldier, were a struggle to read. But Louisa’s chapters had me totally captivated.
If you enjoy time travel, I think you will enjoy this book. Louisa and Robert meet and fall in love. There is just one itty bitty problem. Louisa lives in 2017, while Robert lives in 1917. After a fall from a cliff, Louisa is admitted to a psychiatric hospital under the false assumption that she is suicidal. One day she wanders into an abandoned wing to the hospital and encounters a soldier returning from war injuries.
In addition to being a love story, it is also a story of war with POWs, battles, and graphic battlefield hospital scenes. Aspects of the story reminded me of the old TV show “Hogan’s Heroes”. (I loved that show.) There is also a cast of secondary characters that I really enjoyed, except for Nurse Enema who reminded me of Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
Well-written and complex, it kept me in suspense. How could they possibly get back to each other? Could love possibly be powerful enough to overcome their 100-year separation? I really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more by this author.
A beautifully written and haunting Time Travel tale. The WW1 elements were well-researched. An intelligent and haunting novel. HIghly recommended.
You know the saying, `don’t judge a book by it’s cover?’ It could not be truer for this story. At first glance the cover had me thinking it might be in the fantasy genre which is not something that interests me. When I read that there was time travel it almost put me off once again. However, I am no quitter and when the time was right I decided to give this story a fair chance and I’m so glad I did!
If you are a fan of historical fiction then this story will be right up your alley. The story begins in 2017 with Louisa. She has recently lost her much beloved grandmother and is completely bereft. After being orphaned when her parents died, her grandmother had been the only family she had. After putting her to rest she wanders along the beloved cliffs near her home and settles into the long grass, watching the sunset and toasting her grandmother’s life, with some good whiskey. Unfortunately for Louisa, she imbibes a little too much whiskey and falls asleep only to awaken in the dark, disorientated and as she tries to make her back to safety, she falls.
This leads to Louise being taken to Coldbrook Hall, a psychiatric hospital. Their assessment of her concludes that she made a suicide attempt and must be kept under watch and medicated. What a nightmare she has found herself in! While she is there she makes friends with some of the patients and finds her way into an older part of the building that is soon to be demolished. After exploring for a little while there one day she hears a cry for help and opens the door to find a man who has fallen from his bed.
Let’s go back 101 years now, WW1 is in its 4th year and Robert Robert is a patient at Coldbrook Hall, a military hospital. He has temporarily lost his sight, which of huge stress to him as he is also a very talented artist. He is a lieutenant and desperate to get back to his troops but fears this injury may mean the end of his army career. After falling from his bed one day he calls for help, that call is answered by a beautiful woman called Louisa. He may not be able to see but all of his other senses tell him she is beautiful.
Louisa is shocked to find a man alone in this abandoned building and she soon discovers that there is so much more to the reason he is there. Maybe she is indeed going mad because not only is she the only person who can see or hear him but she seems to be invisible to the staff tending to him. She has no idea what is going on but over the course of several weeks she visits Robert as much as she can. There is a connection she cannot explain and she knows they are falling in love.
When the demolition of the old hospital begins, Louisa panics as this is her only connection to Robert and short of chaining herself to the wrecking ball, she has no way to stop what is going to happen. In a last bid attempt to see him one last time she puts herself in harms way and once again ends up falling. Except this time she falls and falls into a blackness like no other. When she awakens she finds herself in France 1917.
Talk about a massive plot twist! From here the story gets incredibly intense, in some parts very graphic but also a reflection of what soldiers and nurses went through in hospitals treating victims of this terrible war. I could not stop reading this story and was completely invested in Louisa and Robert finding each other again. This was an unexpectedly fabulous story!
When Louisa’s bender is mistaken for a suicide attempt, she finds herself in Coldbrook Hall Psychiatric Hospital. In the once military hospital, there is an unused and seemingly forgotten hall. It is in this hall that there seems to be a time slip that allows Louisa to venture back to 1917 and meeting Lt. Robert Lovett, a solider recovering from WWI wounds. It is this premise that leads the author and reviewers suggest the story to fans of Susanna Kearsley.
The story is told in dual time periods. Readers learn of the ravages of WWI in 1916 and the deplorable conditions and treatment of patients at of Coldbrook Hospital in 2017. The author’s research is evident in the careful details she includes throughout her debut novel. The gritty war scenes are at times gory and gruesome. While I appreciated the obvious research and detail, I found the plot occasionally got bogged down in that detail at times. Additionally, the modern-day hospital conditions seemed dated, but not having spent time in a psychiatric ward, I was able to let go of my presumptions and enjoy Ms. Taylor’s story.
For lovers of time-travel or historical fantasy (i.e., Outlander), Beyond the Moon will be a gripping read. The characters are well developed the plot has a layered complexity, and the transitions between time periods were smooth. Overall, I would say that Beyond the Moon is well-written, and a great read for avid WWI fans.
This a lovely story of time travel between current times and WWI. I can’t imagine the amount of research that went into this book. You feel as though you are in the latter teens of the 20th century due to the descriptions of the battlefield and duties of a VAD nurse. It’s prosy and a bit long for if you’re busy but worth it.
Wow! I am completely wru-ung out from reading Beyond the Moon by Catherine Taylor. But what an amazing book. I love reading and learning from history and enjoy the topic of time travel so after reading her lengthy summary, I thought I was ready for what I would discover in the pages of this book. Not. Even. Close.
I found two characters with seemingly little in common at first glance: Robert Lovett, a hospitalized 1916 WWI Lieutenant who was significantly hurt in battle including hysterical blindness, and Louisa Casson, a 2017 medical student who, having lost her last family member, decided to get good and sloshed and is mistaken for suicidal. She’s then hospitalized against her will.
When I looked closer, however, I saw they were both hospitalized in the same building {though a hundred years apart it seems}, alone, and emotionally hurting. They needed someone in their lives who cared about them as individuals.
What followed was nothing less than one of THE BEST BOOKS I’VE READ ALL YEAR. Yes, I’m screaming, it was that good. Ms. Taylor proceeds to take these two people who are alone and bring them together through time and space. She makes them real people, with feelings, desires, happiness, and pain. Their romance is the kind you root for with every fiber of your being and as with real romances, it has plenty of twists, turns, ups, and downs, some which really catch you off guard and about break your heart. Never fear though. Ms. Taylor’s pen is mightier than the sword.
The final thing I want to commend her for is being brave enough to taken scary topics such as early military healthcare and worse, mental healthcare today. The military healthcare was certainly bare-bones, to say the least, and while they did the best they could with what they had for all they could, they were spread way too thin. Most people died in the field and never even stood a fighting chance. They didn’t even have antibiotics. As for mental health, as advanced as we are medically, mental health conditions are still viewed as taboo by the Earth’s population on the whole. As one who has struggled with depression and anxiety for years, my heart breaks for those whose rights are taken away and are treated horribly as in the story. Kid yourselves not. It happens and I thank Catherine Taylor for helping raise awareness through her book. Enough soapbox time.
In short, if you seek an outstanding book and love reading and learning from history and/or enjoy the topic of time travel plus a fan-freaking-tastic romance, READ THIS BOOK. Make sure you read the author’s helpful summary and prepare to discover the richness of this book.
5+
3
Disclaimer
I receive complimentary books from publishers, publicists, and/or authors, including NetGalley. I am not required to write positive reviews. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
Beyond the Moon is the debut novel for author Catherine Taylor. Ms. Taylor is a new to me author and so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I love reading WWI romances and this one had the unique twist of time travel so I decided to take a chance. All I can say is WOW! I’m in awe that this is a debut novel. It was a fabulous story that I honestly could not put down!
Lieutenant Robert Lovett is in Coldbrook Hall Military Hospital, in the year 1916. An injury from the war has left him with hysterical blindness. A gifted painter, he fears he’ll never see again, let alone paint. When nightmares of the war have him tumbling out of bed, he realizes he’s stuck and desperately calls for help. He’s rather surprised when a female patient named Louisa rescues him.
We first meet Louisa Casson in 2017. She has just buried her grandmother, the woman who raised her and the only family she had left. Feeling all alone, Louisa decides to go up on the cliffs of the South Downs to feel close to her grandmother again and drown her sorrows. When an accidental fall off the cliffs is misconstrued as a suicide attempt, Louisa is forced against her will into Coldbrook Hall Psychiatric Hospital.
I’ll admit going into this book that I was worried I wouldn’t like the time travel aspect as it’s usually not something I read. But I felt Ms. Taylor did a fabulous job of introducing Louisa into Robert’s world and then seamlessly having her slip in and out. I have to admit I was so caught up in this story that I struggled to put it down. As for Louisa and Robert, they were fabulous characters. We see and experience the ravages of war through Robert’s eyes as a soldier and a POW. We also feel Louisa’s turmoil as she comes to grips with her abilities to go back in time, and the things she experiences as a VAD while she’s living in 1917 as Rose Ashby.
This was an extremely emotional, beautifully written story that flowed flawlessly between the two time periods. I was truly impressed with Ms. Taylor’s writing style and the detailed descriptions of the settings. I didn’t feel as if she was telling me a story, I felt like I was seeing and living it. It was a fabulous story, with wonderful characters and a perfect ending. This honestly was one of the best stories I have read all year and I’m still in utter disbelief that this is Ms. Taylor’s debut novel! I definitely will be following this author to see what she has in store for us in the future. I truly can’t recommend this book enough!
When I seen the cover I knew I had to try it.
I like trying out new authors. This is an engaging story with very vivid details about the Great War.
The way this author writes is amazing!
She doesn’t miss a beat with the duo time line. I love it that it’s between exactly 100 years! It wasn’t confusing at all!
She will take you back to the battles and trenches where I was able to “hear” the sounds of the war. She will make you feel like you are there. I even imagined myself in the trenches along with Robert and his fellow soldiers.
I can relate to Robert on one thing and that was his artistic talent. You see, I used to be able to draw but I can’t quite so much anymore because I’m out of practice.
Catherine has the ability to make you “see” Robert’s art. His art was beautiful!
Robert’s point of view is very interesting. I love his story. I learned a lot from him.
He’s a very brave man and I loved that he didn’t hide his feelings like some men do. I wanted to reach out and grab Robert to take him away from all that mess but somehow, I don’t think he’s like it very much.
He is a strong and determined man and all those wonderful qualities are what makes a true man in my opinion of course.
The life of a soldier can’t be easy and it has made me that much more appreciative of our soldiers fighting for our freedom every day. I try to thank each military person if a Veteran or currently serving. I also pray for them each and every day.
Like Louisa, I too was a medical student until I got real sick and couldn’t continue. It just about broke my heart. I can understand Louisa the most because I too have lost family members. I guess people handle their grief in different ways but I handled mine through the good Lord. I’m so glad that He was there for me.
I am the only one left in my immediate family and let me tell you, it’s no fun. It gives me sort of a weird feeling. Thank goodness for my husband and son. They along with Jesus are my rock to lean on.
I too am nosy like Louisa ( but nothing like that has ever happened to me) I love exploring old buildings, graveyards etc.
I loved the historical part of it because without all of these events happening I think that our world would be very very different.
I think about Bible prophecy and God knew exactly what He was doing. The Bible is the Word. He knew that all these events took place because He can look outside the big picture and see exactly what’s going to happen before we do.
All I’m going to say is because I don’t want to spoil this book for others is I didn’t want to put it down. I just had to see what happened to Robert and Louisa.
My thanks to Virtual Historical Tours for a copy of this book. NO compensations were received. All opinions are my own.
I generally don’t read books on time travel but I’m glad I made an exception.
This story was nicely done. It gave a fairly accurate picture of some of the horrors of World War I and the emotions of the solders. Describing the discomforts of finding yourself a hundred years in the past. The uncomfortable clothes to wear and how to use the chamber pot efficiently made me chuckle.
The awful treatment of the patients in the mental hospital in current times might not be the norm those situation do still happen sometimes.