Hang the Moon is both entertaining and inspirational. People generally don't get to choose their situations or circumstances, but it's up to them to deal with the hand they are dealt. Sallie, inherits the responsibility of filling her father's shoes by default. She is determined to live up to his legacy. Although she thought her father could "Hang the Moon," she learns that he was only human. To fulfill her obligations she must rely on her own fortitude and make her own mistakes. Walls does a wonderful job of placing the reader right into the story. She is the master of dialog. Her characters are both quirky and occasionally flawed, encouraging the reader to embrace their humanity. If you love a good historical novel, sprinkled with a shot of redemption, I highly recommend Hang the Moon!

Hang the Moon is a good story about Sallie Kincaid, a tough lady who is ahead of her time. It is a bit unfocused, but if you enjoy reading about this time period you will appreciate the amount of research that Walls did.

I am a big Jeanette Walls fan and really enjoyed Hang the Moon (not as much as Glass Castle by any means). In Hang the Moon, we meet Sallie Kincaid, daughter of the richest man in town, during the prohibition times. WHen Sallie is around 9, she is sent to live with her aunt and then returns when she is 18. THere are a lot of changes and secrets to be discovered when Sallie returns. Such a great, engaging story!

I really tried to get into the story, historical fiction is my favorite genre, but there was something about the character development that didn’t feel complex or interesting enough for me to keep going. It may have ended well, but this title did not hold my attention.

Jeanette Walls is fantastic and I love everything she has written so I always look forward to a new release from her. Always happy for some new historical fiction and this was different than anything I've read recently.

I loved this historical fiction about a strong, independent woman. Walls is a deft writer and this story was interesting and kept me engaged for its entirety. Highly recommend!

Jeannette Walls is such a good storyteller. She hooked me in the first chapter establishing a daughter's adoration of her father with the help of a racing wagon. As the book continued I wasn't quite as enamored as at the start, but still I thought the character of Sallie was really well developed. The rest of the characters not so much. As the story went on it definitely felt more like a family drama than a historical set during and about prohibition, even though that was definitely part of it.
Overall I'm giving this book 3 stars because while I found the story paced well and compelling, I was a bit tired of the blow after blow drama. It got pretty twisted, but ultimately I didn't feel like I knew enough about the characters to care about them.

Hang the Moon is another great read by Jeannette Walls! I loved the historic perspective of Virginia in the prohibition-era. Sallie Kincaid, daughter of town leader, Duke Kincaid shows her strength as a woman coming of age. Just like her other protagonists, Walls creates a vivid and totally believable character in Sallie.

This book is a bit of a rollercoaster. The amount of family drama Sally has to endure is a lot but she is still a strong and resourceful young woman. This book takes place during a time where women are taught to rely on men but Sally is a lot more strong willed than most. I love that she's able to find other women to connect with when most authors would surround her with men to show how she's "not like other women". This book also does a good job of showing that many situations lie in the gray and that there are both good and bad men.

Jeanette Walls creates a strong female protagonist in her historical fiction novel, “Hang the Moon”. Sallie, the daughter of Duke Kincaid, is summoned home upon the death of her stepmother. For a decade, Sallie has lived with her Aunt Faye in challenging conditions in Virginia’s hills. Sallie does not know what her role is with her estranged family, but quickly she is given the role as caregiver to her younger brother, Eddie. On one fateful day, Sallie is thrust into the role of being the head of the family and the town. Sallie learns Duke’s business and shameful secrets. She also learns that she is a woman who is not happy to fall into the typical roles of wife and mother. She wants power and enjoys the excitement of being a “rum runner” during Prohibition. But there is cost to her power.

I enjoyed that Sallie was breaking the mold, but I grew tired of death after death after death. Some characters’ deaths were too convenient for moving the plot forward but didn’t seem believable.

Overall, I would recommend this book to juniors or seniors, especially as a companion text to “The Great Gatsby”.

Thank you to Jeanette Walls, Scribner, NetGaley for the ARC.

2.5 stars. I was so disappointed. I really liked this author's first three books but this one bounced around to so many different story lines that I just couldn't connect with any of the characters. Bottom. Line: Sally Kincaid thinks her daddy hung the moon. Sadly, he just bedded every female who wandered through the house.

I've loved Jeannette Walls's writing since reading The Glass Castle years ago. I was delighted to get a chance to read an ARC of Hang the Moon. I read a good amount of historical fiction, but the Prohibition era isn't one I get to read much of, so this was a real gem.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

Thank you to Scribner, Net Galley and the author, Jeanette Walls for allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Jeanette Walls know how to weave together a story. If you have read any of her previous books, you know that. This book has many surprises and twists that I could not have predicted.

Hang the Moon is told from the POV of the headstrong Sallie Kincaid. Sallie is the daughter of Duke Kincaid from his second marriage. Duke is a powerful man who runs their small town. He owns the Emporium where the town shops and where he is often giving out advice to the locals. When Duke marries for a third time, he finally has a son, Eddie. Duke's third wife is very protective of Eddie and when an accident involving Sallie and Eddie leaves Eddie banged up, Jane ships Sallie off to live with her aunt. She is told it will just be a month. Nine years later, after the death of Jane, Sallie returns to the big house. There she is met with an adoring father who no longer knows her and her 13 year old brother. She wants to get to know Eddie better and her father puts her in charge of her schooling.

Set during the time of Prohibition, much of the town is making illegal whiskey. The Bond brothers, one of the biggest distributors have long running family tension with the Kincaids. They believe that Duke stole land from their grandfather, land where the big house now sits. Is the land truly theirs? Is the land cursed? Through a series of tragedies, Sally keeps picking up the pieces to not only keep her family going, but also the town she loves.

Special thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy of this book. This may be unpopular opinion, but I found the book lapped depth and and I fail to see the point of the book at all.

This is historical fiction set primarily in the 1920s during Prohibition; it's a coming of age story about Sallie Kincaid. Overall, a well-crafted tale, we learn about a lot of family dysfunction and secrets and the lasting effects on the community.

Begins with an intriguing and complex family dynamic, but devolves into assorted episodes, none of which are particularly interesting or seem to add up to a dynamic whole.

I first read Jeannette Walls' memoir The Glass Castle in high school. It was a book that I so often would recommend or gift to others because it is such a moving piece

I was so excited to get an ARC of Hang the Moon. I LOVED THIS BOOK. I love a book set during Prohibition and I love Walls' writing so there was little she had to do to win me over. But Sallie was the perfect main character. I loved reading about her return to Virginia and all that ensues. Excited to have another Walls book to add to my must read recommendation list!

Sallie Kincaid believed her father, Duke, was bigger than life, and she hung on his every word and action. Then after a childish accident, the 8 year-old is banished to her Aunt Faye's hard scrabble cabin. She will be 15 years old before she finally gets a call to come home, for her step mother's funeral. According to her father's orders she's to teach her younger half brother, to make him a real Kincaid. In other words, to make him tough as she is. Sallie tells herself over and over that she has grown up to be beholding to no one, but soon as she takes the Duke's place, she is beholding to everyone. And she must make decisions about what is legal and what is right. Jeanette Walls is a masterful storyteller, and she's created a Southern mountain family that is secretive and flawed, powerful, yet caring within its own creeds. In a story that rushes from one crisis to another, Walls has captured a version of prohibition rarely presented. I received a copy of HANG THE MOON from Netgalley and all opinions expressed are mine.

Oh my goodness! I haven’t read a novel this quickly in a very long time. I loved every single word, sentence, paragraph, and chapter of this wonderful story! It seems as though every time I turned a page, something unexpected happened. The book contains so many twists and turns it’s like riding a roller coaster . . . on speed! I finished reading its 368 pages in less than 24 hours, and I do believe that is a record for me. I cannot praise this book enough nor recommend it more! Jeannette Walls has outdone herself.

Many years ago I also devoured Jeanette’s fantastic, bizarre, and very true memoir, The Glass Castle, that reads more like an improbable novel than a true-life story. The memoir stayed on The New York Times’ bestseller list for over eight years. I knew then that Jeanette Walls was a fantasti c writer destined to write wonderful, worthy books, but I hadn’t read anything more of hers until now. I regret not yet having read her two previously published and acclaimed novels, The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, the latter of which was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. I intend to remedy my mistake soon.

I sincerely thank Ms. Walls and her editor, Scribner, and NetGalley for giving me an advanced reader’s copy of Hang the Moon’s manuscript. I apologize for not reading it and writing this review before it was published in March, 2023, but I simply have been in over my head with various obligations. I’m sorry I didn’t read it sooner because I enjoyed it so much and cannot wait to read more of Ms. Wall’s writings! Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for bringing this fabulous new book to my attention.

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls is a great novel with a strong and fierce leading lady. Set during the prohibition era Sallie Kincaid is what all women strive to be. A leader, resilient, and her own person. I absolutely loved this book. I loved the story, the characters and the journey that Walls takes us on. I highly recommend this book!