Twelve Moons: The most beautiful and inspiring memoir you’ll read

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Having to battle systems not adequately equipped with knowledge, finances and sometimes just basic empathy felt all too familiar. Finally, in addition to these conflicting emotions regarding the tone of the book, I found myself a little frustrated by some repetitious phrasing and inconsistencies in terms of timelines. However, that being said, considering this is Giles' first book, Twelve Moons is a debut masterpiece. Navigating single parenthood, advocating from her girls and herself - an endless battle to be heard - is isolating and exhausting.

Giles also struggles with the latter and her writing is honest, sad and funny as what must be an exhausting and draining life is explored. I actually moved away from the North East in the middle of reading this, and found myself so racked with homesickness for the wild coastlines of Northumberland, that I ended up putting it down for five months before I had the strength to pick it up again. Set over the course of a year and charting her life as a single parent raising her four daughters, Twelve Moons is a stunning debut novel. The challenges of bringing up a young family in isolated Northumberland are laid bare with brutal and heart-rending honesty.A passage in which the author describes having to de-register one of her children from school by the age of six was particularly emotive and hard-hitting. Throughout the quiet turn of each month she charts the sea swimming, rock pool immersing, hill running to calm her busy brain, and of nature weaving it’s magic, grounding, nurturing and holding the whole family safe as she reclaims herself from the sadness and scars left by shattered hopes; rediscovering and unearthing the woman concealed by motherhood. TWELVE MOONS follows a year spent caught between the wild sea and the changing moon of the wide Northumberland skies. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. She evokes the lives of her 4 amazing daughters, The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One with honesty, compassion and clarity.

Unfortunately the more personal side of the book fell really flat on me and I just felt really sad that the person spent their life escaping from perceived pressure, anxiety and mental strain.I shared this book with a good friend, a mum like me whose everyday mothering strays from the conventional. It is here they can be truly themselves; the book felt just as much a love letter to the natural landscape as it did to her daughters.

In fact, the calm and chaos of their lives mirror the ebb and flow of the tides and the lunar cycle beautifully. It is to nature that the family turn to time and time again to give them strength during troubled times, never more so than when they turn to the moon in its ever-changing guises, yet setting the rhythm to the year and ever constant in their shifting lives.How important it was to find that familiar glow, sometimes in amongst deep cloud, sometimes a bright summer night sky. A newly single mom and her 4 daughters (including one with specific needs) navigate their small town lifestyle with lots of nature hikes, singing, occasional quarantines, and ocean swimming. Their tribe is a force that is at once fragile, but also characterised by strength and togetherness. Each word is chosen with care to vividly portray the landscapes, and to express the varying emotions experienced by the author.