Where the Forest Meets the Stars

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How is the word and idea of "nest" used in different ways throughout the book? What themes in the story might nests represent? How do you think Gabe’s renaming of the Pinwheel Galaxy to ‘The Infinite Nest’ relates to those themes? Joanna Teale is a graduate student working on her doctorate in Biology. She has settled for the summer in the beautiful woodlands and streams of rural Illinois. She is studying the nesting habits and success or fail of the local birds nesting habits, journaling their movements extensively. She is only a few weeks into renting her small home when a girl of about nine appears at dusk from the woods. She is barefoot, dirty and clothed in only pajamas. No matter how many times Joe questions her, she insists that she’s from a planet far away and has come down to witness five miracles. Only then will she return to the Pinwheel Galaxy. Jo is a solitary woman who is dealing with a double dose of grief after losing her mother and being diagnosed with breast cancer. She knows that she should call the police and get them involved but every time she attempts this the little girl, now called Ursa, runs away. Did the inclusion of Shakespearean characters help you see the story in new ways? What is the significance of Gabe telling Ursa she positively influenced the fates of the kittens Juliet and Hamlet? Along with the well-written relationship aspects of the book, the suggestion of possible out-of-this-world fantasy is intriguing, pulling me along in the quest to discover the truth, though it never feels detached from reality. It's like a little sprinkle of fairy dust - just enough to make my inner child keep exploring to the very end. Even in the later chapters when things take a darker turn for a bit, it manages to never lose that magical thread, which I was thankful for. Throughout, there's a rich cast of supporting characters, with Tabby being a particular favorite of mine, and helping to lighten the mood at just the right times. What follows is a series of domestic lovey dovey drama where the two main leads play house and play parents to the kid and a cliché love story that completely disregards the fact that they have a shit ton of trauma and mental health issues to work through. The depiction or representation of them is lousy and insensitive.

We know that something will happen to reveal Ursa’s story but it is much more tragic and terrifying than could be imagined! A beautiful story of love, resilience, and the power of second chances.” —Susie Orman Schnall, award winning author of The Subway GirlsGabriel Nash lives on a farm next to the property where Joanna is staying. She enlists his help in trying to locate the girl’s parents. The three develop a strong bond, but both Gabe and Joanna realize they’re setting themselves up for trouble with the law for harboring a runaway child without again reporting to the authorities. Gabe has a big heart, but also harbors his own heartache. But the more time they spend together, the more questions they have. How does a young girl not only read but understand Shakespeare? There are DOZENS of ways to say said and asked, but they are used constantly in the he said, she said conversations. It seriously grated on my nerves, particularly when the characters were only exchanging short remarks or utterances without any inner monologues in between.

I'll admit as I was reading this, I vacillated between wanting to get to Ursa's "real story" and hoping that she was perhaps telling the truth, despite the fact that such a resolution might require me to suspend my disbelief. But at its core, Where the Forest Meets the Stars is a story about friendship, love, bravery, and how the family we choose is often more important to us than the family we belong to, so I decided it didn't matter how Vanderah wrapped up her story. If you are looking for something a science fiction book with a lot of aliens you need to find a different book. There are so many points where this book made me double and triple guess whether Ursa really was an alien or not. Honestly, I still am not quite sure and I don’t know if I need an answer either. Ursa will wrap your heart around her little finger just like she does with Jo and Gabe. You can’t help but love her and metaphorically hold her close. The author does do a good job in making me wonder whether the little girl is, indeed, an alien – such potential here – though the child is too often a bratty little whiner. Okay. I listened to this book, and that may have been the way the narrator read chose to read it. She also made the female lead too argumentative at times, perhaps in an effort to create drama. Male voices sound identical. Female voices are all ballsy, apparently to distinguish them from the resonance of the main character, whose voice was lovely.At first, I thought this could be an interesting read, but I kept putting it off because I wasn’t feeling a contemporary fiction novel. This one turned out to be pretty good. I wasn’t a huge fan of all the profanity and honestly, the author could have changed how Gabriel found out about his mom’s affair, even though it didn’t go into details. Each of the main characters has been hurt in their lives but when they come together they build each other up and become even stronger than they were alone. Where the Forest Meets the Stars Parent Guide I was taken by surprise by how much I loved this book. The protagonist, Jo, is working toward her PhD and spending the summer studying birds and their nests in the woods. She’s had a very rough couple of years, but at no point did I find her to be self-pitying. She’s a strong, admirable character, and her tragedy is revealed over the course of the story. How might Jo’s pre- and post-surgery images of herself help her relate to Ursa’s insistence that she’s an alien in a human body? Do you think Gabe had dual ways of seeing himself as well? Discuss how physical and emotional trauma changes people’s views of themselves. But why hasn't Ursa shown up in any missing-children bulletins? How can this young child not only read, but understand ornithology texts and Shakespeare? Why won't she tell them the truth about where she really came from, and why does she keep endangering herself by running away every time Jo and Gabe try to get to the bottom of her family situation? There can't possibly be any truth to the story she's telling them, can there? There’s something about this girl, as much as Jo is to feel like she’s being played, that makes her also sense that there’s more to this story than she’s being told, this girl seems very young, and yet seems incredibly smart for her apparent age.

There are books you read that you enjoy, there are books that you love, and then there are the books you hold in your heart. Having just finished Glendy Vanderah's stunningly beautiful debut novel, Where the Forest Meets the Stars, I know it will be one to cherish. What a special book this was. How did the word ‘changeling’ in the first sentence affect how you thought about the girl and the coming story? Why do you think the author used this particular word? During the course of the story, the three of them learn to look beyond their own problems and appreciate each other.Yes there were some, what could be considered, repetitive aspects, but they were told in slightly different ways at times to keep an element of causing people to at times wonder, "Perhaps the other "version" is true."