Moon Window, by Jane Louise Curry, for Timeslip Tuesday

Moon Window, by Jane Louise Curry (1996), was supposed to be my time travel Tuesday book two weeks ago, but life got in the way....so here's just a quick look at it, enough so that I can add it to my master list of time travel books.

Jo Ellen and her mother were everything to each other, until her mother falls in love, and Jo is confronted with the horrible fact that she will now have a stepfather.  In order to facilitate the honeymoon, Jo ends up being sent off to stay with an elderly cousin, Granty, who lives in a fabulous replica of a Scottish castle in the middle of nowhere, with a strange "moon window" up in the attic...  And although Jo's determined to wreck the honeymoon by running away, she's fascinated by the place in spite of herself.

Even more so, when she finds herself slipping back in time through the moon window.

Not only does she meet the little girl who will become Granty, she starts to learn that there is a dark story behind the grand estate....the story of "Witch Ellen," the Scottish woman who had the castle built, who is very much still a force to be reckoned with, and not in a good way.

Time travel and secrets reveled in the present bring the mystery to a terrible climax, that ties up loose threads the reader didn't even know where waiting to be tied.

It was a mixed bag for me.  I thought Jo was a brat, but also thought her mother was a brat too; for instance, moving them into her new husband's place and not taking old familiar furnishings that Jo loved with them.  I like big old houses in stories, and this one had some nice details, but it was strangely static and never became quite real.  This actually fits with the plot beautifully, but was disappointing for me.

I did enjoy the time travel; there's a nice sense of strangeness to the first trips especially, and a nice ratcheting up of time travel tension as things progress.  But though it added to the story, and the characterization of both Jo and Granty, I can't remember that it actually functioned much with regards to the larger plot point of the malevolent magic at the heart of the story.

In short, though I was quite happy to be reading it, and interested enough in what was happening that the pages turned quickly, I'll probably never read it again.  But I bet I would have if I'd been given a copy as a 9 year old.