what a beautiful novel. let’s just start there because I am truly so moved by the story of louise, camilla, helene— these incredible women with the gift of healing touch. an actual tear ran down my cheek as I read the final sentences. the tribute to the magic of women, to their work, to nurses, to healing, family legacy— elizabeth becker took these themes and tenderly interwove a vivid and ripe story as we jumped through the past and present. i will say, i did guess the plot twist early on but that did not take away from the emotional impact of the story because the storytelling was that good and everything we learn about the lives of each of these women captivates you. i was fortunate enough to be provided an arc copy via netgalley for an honest review, but I will be at the bookstore on release day picking up a physical copy because this is a book I want to put my hands on & relive again while eagerly flipping through the pages. i think this novel will be on quite a few lists this year & maybe more. thank you for this masterful & magical story, elizabeth becker.

The Moonlight Healers by Elizabeth Becker gives us the story of Louise who discovers she has inherited the gift of healing after she brings her friend back to life after a horrific car accident. Her mother takes her to her grandmother’s house in Virginia to learn the stories of her family’s history including her great grandmother who was a nurse during World War II. Louise finds what she is truly capable of while discovering the secrets of her family. It’s a beautiful story about survival, love, and the bonds between mothers and daughters.

I recommend this book for magical realism and historical fiction readers. The book alternates between Louise’s story in 2019 and Helene in 1942, each of the women are struggling to come to grips with their healing gift. The stories converge in present time to show how the women in their family have healed others throughout history and how they heal one another.

Thank you Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. All opinions are my own.

The Moonlight Healers is a book of magical realism and fantasy drama. Being pulled into the pages and transported to a different world is always a joy for a reader.... Absolutely recommend to fantasy lovers!

Set in both 1940’s France and current day Virginia. Helene is a 17 year old with a special gift to heal. Her gift allows her to ease the dying soldiers final moments. She is able to honor their souls with peace in the battlefield as they transition. She can also revive a soul. She learns that any revived soul is now on borrowed time and one can’t escape death when it comes for us. Choices have to be made to restore that balance. Jump forward to current day and Helene’s great granddaughter Louise, is in a horrible car accident. Her best friend dies on impact and Louise brings him back. The decisions these healers have to make is heartbreaking. How far are we willing to go and how much are we willing to give up for those we love. “It’s not the end you think it is. There’s peace here. They’re safe. Their pain is gone. And the living are the ones who carry it now.”

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ebook copy of The Moonlight Healers. I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It was definitely a heartfelt novel that pays homage to the work of nurses, while also incorporating some mystical elements that rounded out this great book! One of my favorite reads of the new year. It was written beautifully, the setting was dreamy and the relationships between generations of women with these gifts of healing was a balm to my reading soul. I was so happy to read such a satisfying novel, and thank you again for the opportunity to read this

This wasn't a book I would normally pick up, but I am so glad I did. This was such a wonderful story! 
With my grandmother being a nurse, this felt so close to home, seeing the love and compassion for nurses/healers. I absolutely loved watching generations of women in the same family discovering their passion and hard work it is to be a nurse. 
I loved the writing style and was so connected to the characters.

This story was beautiful in its simplicity.

Louise comes from a long line of healing women, but she was unaware she had these capabilities until she brings her best friend back from the dead after a car accident.

Helene, her great-grandmother, learned everything about the power, and the cost, of her healing touch working as a nurse on the frontlines in France during World War II.

While the story of their family legacy is told primarily through these two POVs more than 60 years apart, it also shows how five generations of women have dealt with their abilities and the personal costs of using them.

Poignant and powerful, short but incredibly well-written!

A thoughtful, tender story about a family of women with the gift of healing.

This is a leisurely, character-driven story somewhat in the vein of The Unmaking of June Farrow (though I do feel like this leaned fairly YA).

Thanks to Harlequin for providing an advanced digital copy through NetGalley for me to review!

The Moonlight Healers
By: Elizabeth Becker

5 Stars

Being a healer is a true form of magic. In this story, you follow Helene and Louise as they find out about an amazing ability they possess. Healers just by touch. Some even bring others back from the brink of death, but with a cost. This story is one of war and tragedy. Beauty and sacrifice. It follows a timeline of war and timeline a little more modern, but both tell of women with hearts of gold. Women with the healing touch. Women with magic.

This story was beautiful. It was well written and descriptive. It was full of heart and soul. It made me smile, and it made me cry. It was an emotionally gripping read that captivates from start to finish. I know I was captivated by the scenery, characters, and story. I just wish I had more tissues.

*I want to thank Netgalley and the author for this book in return for my honest review*

Stormi Ellis
Boundless Book Review

This book is told in alternate timelines.

I have never read something by this author before but this really does suck you in from the get go. I will be seeking outt other books for this author.

I’ll be updating my review shortly!!

Reviewer Jessica B, gave such a perfect review for this book.

I found this an enjoyable read—fantastic plot with strong characters. The switch between timelines was smooth and easy to follow who was doing what and where. The characters had similar traits which made the family connection real. The ending was a bit abrupt but then again, we know what is going to happen so why drag it out. This is a great story that I highly recommend. I can't wait to check out more by this author, they have amazing talent.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 out of 5 stars

If this is ever made into a movie, there won't be a dry eye at the end.

Told in alternating timelines.

Louise has just graduated. Her long-time friend, Peter, has confessed his love to her, but she laughs it off as a post-graduation, emotion-induced reaction. The next day, when Peter is driving Louise, he is not wearing a seatbelt, they are arguing. Then Louise is waking up and Peter is in the road, neck at an unnatural angle. Louise, in her devastation, starts compressions, even though she knows he is gone.

But then...the impossible. When the paramedics take him, she sees him sit up and talk to them.

When her mother finds out, she immediately sends Louise to her estranged grandmother's home on a peach orchard.

During WWII in Nazi-occupied France, Helene is sent to a convent by her mother to help her cousin with medical and healing procedures, but warns her not to let her book of healing information be found, and not to let anyone but her cousin know that she is a healer. Her cousin, however, has changed. She no longer uses her healing powers, and considers them to be blasphemous. But when the Allies land and are immediately overtaken, she has a temporary change of heart.

As the two time lines come together, we have heartwrenching tales of mother-daughter relationships, of friendships, whispers of romance. Very well written and well-researched (from what I can tell), this was a deeply moving story. You really get a feel for the warring feelings and emotions that each of the characters - Helene, her daughter Camille, Camille's daughter Bobbie, and finally, Bobbie's daughter, Louise - experience when their healing isn't enough, and when death is not a tragedy.

Louise discovers she has the ability to heal with the touch of her hands by accident when her best friend is thrown from the windshield of his car.  This leads her to find answers, and she discovers that the women in her family have passed down the gift of healing for generations, but it comes with limitations. 

Thoughts 💭
Since their gift is passed down through the women in their family, I really enjoyed the dual points of view from Louise in the current day and her great-grandmother, who was a nurse during WWII. It gives a unique perspective of two women coming into their own with these gifts.  You would think that having a unique family secret would unite the family even more, but it seems to just draw them further apart.  This added a lot of tension and mystery to the story.  The ending was bitter sweet but satisfying. The family dynamics, setting, and heartwarming tale come together to create a beautiful story.  I also recommend checking out the author's note at the end!

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you NetGalley for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Moonlight Healers follows the story of Louise, a young woman who experiences a traumatic experience with her best friend and saves his life, and her great grandmother Helene, living as a nurse during World War II. The novel alternates between both of these characters as they grapple with the magical healing abilities they possess, one that is hereditary between women in their ancestry line. While I did not like this writing too much — I feel like it could’ve been done better and captured me more if it had more delicate and meaningful writing. I did love these characters, and I loved the magic that they used and how it was described.

My other issue with this wasn’t the novel itself but the E-ARC I received. The formatting on my kindle was awful, and looking at it on my mobile app I noticed there were beer emojis separating a bunch of the paragraphs… very weird.

"A powerful debut with a magical twist about one woman's discovery of her family's secret healing abilities and the mysterious consequences she must contend with when she uses them on someone she loves.

For generations, the Winston women have possessed an unspoken magical gift: they can heal with the touch of a hand. It's a tradition they've always had to practice in secret, in the moonlight hours, when the fireflies dance and the whippoorwill birds sing.

But not every healer has rightfully passed on this knowledge to her descendants, and for young Louise Winston, the discovery of her abilities comes in less-than-ideal circumstances - she brings her best friend back from death following an accident, the day after he professed his long-held feelings for her, five days before she's supposed to move away.

Desperate for answers, and to avoid this new reality between them, Louise escapes to her grandmother's lush Appalachian orchard. There, she uncovers her family's hidden history in a tattered journal, stemming back to her brave great-grandmother who illicitly healed Allied soldiers in war-torn France. But just as Louise begins to embrace her unique legacy, she learns that it can also come with a mysterious cost. And with a life hanging in the balance, she'll be forced to make the most impossible of choices...

Spanning eighty years, The Moonlight Healers is a deeply empathetic, heartfelt novel about mothers and daughters, life and death, and the beautiful resilience of love."

Definitely a Pushing Daisies vibe.

A beautiful journey into history, healing, family legacies, and the magical thread that ties it all together! This is the type of story that breaks your heart and puts it back together again.

Along the way we follow two generations of women who discover a magical gift of healing and their struggles of exactly what that means for them and how it fits into their lives. After a tragic car accident, Louise accidentally brings her best friend and blossoming love, Peter, back to life. This unravels a whole web of secrets that have been kept from her by the previous generations of women in her family. The tale weaves in and out with the heroic tale of her great grandmother, Helene, discovering her own gift in war-torn France.

This isn’t be type of story I would normally pick up, but I am SO glad that I did! It was a quick read that kept my attention, and gave me all of the emotions. If you like historical fiction, then this is DEFINITELY for you - and the subtle addition of fantasy was icing on the cake!

What a beautiful, beautiful story! Not all choices are easy, and this book confronts the hard decisions and responsibilities that come with gifts! I will definitely read other works by this author in the future! Go pick it up and check it out for yourself!

really enjoyed this although the subject matter for one POV was difficult to read about in the current state of America 2025 (lots of internal screaming and external crying reading about the affects of occupation of France during WWII and thinking about how America is trending….just dread). That being said this book was a message of hope. In this book we follow a line of women who pass on healing abilities through the maternal bloodline and this ability is only passed on to women. We meet Louise in 2019 where she has just brought her friend Peter back from the dead and learns about her families abilities through her mother and grandmother. We also meet Helene in 1942 France where he mother is sending her away for her safety to serve as a nurse. As the story continues we see how these narratives weave together and eventually inform the next generation. I found this story to be touching and heart wrenching (especially toward the end of the novel when several revelations occur that raise the stakes of Louise’s current predicament). By the end of this novel I was bawling over the bittersweet conclusion and story of love through the ages.


Thank you to Elizabeth Becker, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and NetGalley for approving this ARC.

This was a truly touching, inspiring, heartfelt novel. Being a nurse myself (and my grandmother having been a nurse), it really resonates with me. It’s well-written with lovable characters, it made me cry at the end! Loved the element of the past tying in with the future and the lessons of life and death.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the Arc in exchange for my honest little review!

Firstly, I usually dont gravitate with books that go from past and present but this wasn’t the case, because the author made it so enjoyable and easy to understand. The magic system I think could use a little more work, in a way to explain more on how things are actually done. I did enjoy the healing aspect of it though.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the Arc!

Honestly this was such a lovely book about Healers and nurses. It really does feel like a letter of appreciation of the hard work nurses do for patients. The back and forth of Helene and Louise feels natural and isn't so Info dumpy, which makes the beginning feel slow at first, but eventually pick up. Th characters feel humane and one can really connect to them in a spiritual level. Overall a great read that takes time to build up, but gives an amazing story about a family and the secrets they have to keep.