Searching for Jimmy Page

Searching for Jimmy Page is a beautifully written book. It’s hard for me to describe how much I enjoyed reading the writing in this novel. It was poetic and lyrical, honest, at times bleak but still full of hope. I read it really fast as I was captivated by the plot. I loved the characters especially Luna who travels to London to find Jimmy page as the title suggests. It’s set in the 80s so there is a wonderful sense of nostalgia for 1980s London. You can almost hear the soundtrack to this book while reading it. If you are a led zeppelin fan you will adore it, if you are a literature fan you will love it. Trigger warnings include Cancer, Suicide,self harm, moderately explicit language.

Our narrator Luna, wise beyond her 18 years, is indeed searching, not just for Jimmy Page. We have a story containing complicated family relationships and accompanying back stories, memories and dynamics. A hard-earned coming of age story for budding writer Luna as she grows and discovers what's most important to her.

Luna has an extensive vocabulary (remember, she's a budding writer!), whipping out thoughts like this: "I imagined the devil and a cadre of sycophants dressed in ceremonial robes dancing around the tree to "Dazed and Confused" or "No Quarter," invoking tenebrous spirits, Jimmy Page ever vigilant from afar." The prose is quite beautiful and lyrical.

This is all told against a very realistic backdrop of an obsession with Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin. The title alone pulled me into this book and the author absolutely nails the various time periods, the looks, costumes, posters, the songs. Any misstep here would have taken any fan out of the story and this never happened. Hallberg really did her research

Good story and great characters. Lots of fun reading g this. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

Sucked in by the title, stayed for the story. Set in the 1980s, Luna is an 18 year old girl on a farm in North Carolina. Coming from a free-spirited mother, who committed suicide when Luna was a young girl, Luna is left to wonder exactly who she is. Luna's life is haunted with loss. Remembering her mother's obsession with Jimmy Page, Luna develops one all her own and goes out looking for answers from Jimmy himself.
This is a beautifully written coming of age tale. Christy Alexander Hallberg did a wonderful job of setting the 80s mood and very specific details really make the story that much more. It is very easy to slip into Luna's life and live the story. I read to a Led Zeppelin soundtrack, of course.

I was given a digital arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Christy Alexander Hallberg and Livingston Press. This book will be published on October 20th 2021.

Set in Full River, North Carolina in the 1980s, Searching for Jimmy Page is the coming of age story of troubled teenager, Luna.

Luna’s mother, Claudia, committed suicide when Luna was still a child and Luna’s main memories of her revolve around a love of lavender incense and Led Zeppelin. She was convinced Jimmy Page was hiding messages to her in amongst the lyrics.

The author does a fantastic job of setting the scene and time in which Luna’s story takes place, weaving in mentions of Led Zeppelin songs and albums, tarot cards, magic mushrooms, tie dyed clothing, Formica tables and beanbag chairs to help you easily visualise the world she describes.

The other townspeople of Full River are religious and shocked by the fact Claudia committed the unforgivable sin of suicide. Luna has carried this societal prejudice towards her and her family alongside her bottled up grief, cutting herself and trying to cope with her feelings as best she can, eventually throwing herself into writing, which her mother had always said she was good at.

Luna discovers that Claudia attended a Led Zeppelin concert right around the time Luna was conceived and her friend Connie suggests that maybe Jimmy Page is Luna’s mystery father and that is why Claudia was so obsessed with him. Connie even thinks there is a resemblance. Luna has many questions she would like answered and embarks on a journey to London to find out the truth. She is dogged in her determination for answers and her need for closure. Through this experience she finds herself a family but it may not be quite what she was expecting.

Hallberg’s conversations between the teenage friends and between Luna and her grandmother and mother are believably realistic. Her lyrical prose is well-suited to her scene-building descriptive passages:

"The Full River Greyhound station is like every other small town bus station in America: cheap linoleum floors with scuff marks and gravel residue that crunches underfoot; crinkled potato chip bags stashed like footnotes under metal chairs, wads of gum stuck to the bottoms; dingy white walls, reminders of the days when travelers chain-smoked over Styrofoam cups of stale coffee while they waited for a bus to Anywhere But Here, the smell of Camels and Winstons lingering in the building’s brittle bones."

Sometimes, however, I felt that the turn of phrase was too sophisticated for a teenager, albeit a budding writer who loves to read:

"I felt like an apostate come back to the fold, except the only divine inspiration I garnered derived from grandeur, not God—the ornate stained glass windows, coruscating in the feeble lamplight; the elegiac beauty of sepulchral chambers of kings and queens; Gothic arches, swooping upward like hands in prayer; Chaucer’s tomb and the stone slabs lodged in the floor of the Poets’ Corner memorializing writers I revered, and the sense of trepidation I felt at treading over them."

I highly recommend this moving story to lovers of coming of age stories, troubled teens finding themselves despite complicated family situations, fans of Led Zeppelin music and ‘80s nostalgia.

Readers should be prepared for the following themes: suicide, teenage self-harm, cancer.

The title drew me in, but Luna, the main character, and her story kept me entertained and turning the pages. I’m a Led Zeppelin fan and really enjoyed the music references. Christy Hallberg’s lovely writing pours through on every page. A great coming of age story loaded with nostalgia, emotion, and of course, rock and roll.

Thank you to Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama and NetGalley for this ARC.

Honestly I picked this book up because of the title. Of course I wanted to read a book about Jimmy Page - only this isn't a biography or a non-fiction book like I assumed. It is a beautiful book about a young girl growing up in North Carolina. Here's the blurb:

"The unraveling of eighteen-year-old Luna Kane’s haunted past begins in the winter of 1988, when her dying great-grandfather, a self-proclaimed faith healer, claims he hears phantom owls crying in the night. “Them owls, like music. Can you hear the music?” he implores her in his final moments, triggering Luna’s repressed memory of her dead mother’s obsession with Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin’s legendary guitar wizard. Desperate to learn the truth about her mother’s suicide, to tease fact from family lore in order to weave her own personal narrative, Luna embarks on a pilgrimage from her family’s farm in the pines of eastern North Carolina to England, to search for the man whose music her mother held sacred, Jimmy Page."

Luna's an interesting character. She faced hardship and loss early in life and her journey to find the answers to her questions is fascinating. I loved her determination to reach her goal, regardless of what she finds and the lengths she went to achieve it. I liked the nostalgic feel to the story and the lyrical writing. I could feel the music while I read with references to the Led Zeppelin songs bringing back memories.

Thanks to Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on October 20, 2021.