The Moonlight Dreamers

Amber, Maali, Sky and Rose are girls who don’t want to be told what to do, how to behave, what to wear etc. They form a secret society named the Moonlight Dreamers, set up by Amber for like-minded girls she wants to be her friends. At the start none of the girls know each other. Rose and Sky are brought together because Rose’s supermodel mother is dating Sky’s houseboat-dwelling father.

‘Yes I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees dawn before the rest of the world.’ This is the quotation from Oscar Wilde that gives the Moonlight Dreamers their name.

Inaugurating the club each girl must introduce herself and then explain something she dreams of achieving or experiencing. The girls decide they will work together to fulfil each of their dreams. The rest of Curham’s book follows the attempts to realise the four dreams.

Curham picks her way skilfully around the clichés that abound in books for readers of this age. The convention is that each character must be desperate to find a mate, whether of the same or another gender. In the real world young people’s ambitions are more complex, more varied and hence more interesting. Curham shows in this excellent book that it is OK to get together, to read, to talk, to speculate, to dream. At the same time, however, the aims of these girls are firmly rooted in their daily lives. Their use of social media looms large as an influence. The book is lofty in ambition and aspirational in intent. But it gets down to the dirty realities of the world too.

This brilliant book should be read by any girl who, from the age of 13, feels herself to be different.