September 14th, 2010 
Once in a Blue Moon is like canned vegetables. It contains the stuff of a healthy meal, but is not always the healthiest option.
Goudge attempts to tell a modern story of a family divided and reunited, and to place their story in racial and class contexts. The two main characters are split up as children and sent to different foster homes but reunite when the less-lucky sister loses her own daughter and needs help retrieving her daughter from the foster care system. The lucky sister is fighting the man, attempting to keep her beachfront acreage and her small bookstore. Each sister has a romantic dilemma, but their professional and family problems dominate the book–which is good.
And yet. The depiction of the foster care system is hard to stomach. For the scenarios depicted in the book to believable, you have to assume a lot of incompetence on the system’s end (easy to do) and a lack of resourcefulness on the characters’ end (harder to do, because it makes them less sympathetic).
Race relations fall flat. At one point, the less-lucky sister’s logic follows the pattern “My daughter is half-black, so I’m not racist.” The book is well-intentioned and strives to be emotionally relevant and honest, but the execution is a bit off. Sometimes the author resorts to simply announcing what had transpired, rather than bringing the reader along. It comes across as a news item rather than an experience the reader shares with the characters.
The elder sister, Lindsay, becomes a Mary Sue to less-lucky sister Kerrie Ann’s detriment. The solution to their problems with each other and the world is for Kerrie Ann to become more like Lindsay and for Lindsay to become better at tolerating Kerrie Ann. Why have two protagonists if their effects will be so unequal?
This isn’t to say that I don’t recommend the book. It suits a certain mood: read this book when you want vegetables but don’t want to do much more work than opening the can.
It sounds like all the ingredients for a satisfying book are there.. I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it more. Thank you, though, for the thoughtful review and for being on the tour.