An Arrow to the Moon

Hunter Yee has perfect aim with a bow and arrow, but all else in his life veers wrong. He’s sick of being haunted by his family’s past mistakes. The only things keeping him from running away are his little brother, a supernatural wind, and the bewitching girl at his new high school.

Luna Chang dreads the future. Graduation looms ahead, and her parents’ expectations are stifling. When she begins to break the rules, she finds her life upended by the strange new boy in her class, the arrival of unearthly fireflies, and an ominous crack spreading across the town of Fairbridge.

As Hunter and Luna navigate their families’ enmity and secrets, everything around them begins to fall apart. All they can depend on is their love. . . but time is running out, and fate will have its way.  

Told from alternating points of view, An Arrow to the Moon focuses on Luna and Hunter, whose parents hate each other. When Luna and Hunter first meet, the two begin to walk an unexpected path where love might bloom. However, their families’ hatred makes it imperative that they don’t get caught together. Intertwined with their budding romance, the two struggle with their family lives. Luna feels like her parents’ expectations are suffocating, while Hunter’s relationship with his parents is full of conflict, mistrust, and often borders on hate. Many readers will relate to Luna and Hunter, who are on the cusp of leaving home and desire to forge their own paths. 

While Luna and Hunter are similar to Romeo and Juliet, the story also incorporates Chinese mythology, which may confuse readers without background knowledge of the myths. The constantly shifting points of view also add to the confusion. The book includes excerpts from both Luna’s and Hunter’s families as well as the story’s villain. Many readers will have a difficult time remembering all the essential parts of the book, especially in the latter part, when the elements are being woven together. Even though the conclusion explains how Hunter and Luna fit into Chinese mythology, readers will still have questions, which leaves the story feeling incomplete. 

The author, Emily X.R. Pan, uses beautiful language to draw readers into An Arrow to the Moon, and at first, Luna and Hunter’s relationship is a sweet romance. However, the book’s tone abruptly changes about halfway through when Luna walks in on her mother having sex with a man who is not her husband. Afterwards, Luna is justifiably upset, which is reflected in the profanity used. Some readers may be shocked at how Luna’s whole attitude changes after this event, especially because the scene feels unnecessary and gives the story a harsh and negative tone that takes the focus off Luna and Hunter’s relationship.  

An Arrow to the Moon’s complex plot, shifting narrators, and incorporation of mythology will appeal to strong readers who already have some knowledge of Chinese Mythology. Additionally, the tonal shift makes the book best suited for mature readers who enjoy complex storylines that prompt them to think about how families shape our lives and decisions. If you’re looking for a romance that gets inspiration from Romeo and Juliet, A Pho Love Story by Loan Le and Crossing the Line by Simone Elkeles may be the perfect book to steal your heart. 

Sexual Content  

• At a party, Luna plays Seven Minutes in Heaven. She had never kissed anyone before and she “was curious to do a lot more than kissing.” Later, Luna wonders, “What would have happened, if she’d gone ahead and kissed him?” 
• Hunter falls into a crack in the earth. The next day, while on the school bus, Luna sees Hunter’s bruises. She “leaned down to kiss the tender brown and indigo. There was electricity between her lips and his skin, a spark as she made contact.” Later that day, Hunter shows Luna his bruises are unexplainably healed. 
• While in the cafeteria, Hunter kisses Luna’s hand. “There was a spark. His lips buzzed and heat swept through his body.” The kiss leaves an “indigo print of his lips on her flesh.” Afterwards, Hunter “wondered if this was what a hickey was.” 
• While in the woods, Luna kisses Hunter, who “worried he would be bad at kissing, but she made it feel easy. There was that electricity, and a sense of this being absolutely right. The smell of her soft skin was intoxicating, sent a pooling warmth down into his body.” Luna “brought his fingers to her lips. She kissed his thumb, his knuckles. . . He offered kisses of his own.” The kissing is described over a page.  
• While Luna’s parents are out of town, Hunter goes to her house. While there, they get into a fight and he leaves. Luna reflects, “This was not what she had expected when she invited him over. She’d envisioned them side by side on the couch. Kissing again, like in the woods. Maybe stuff beyond kissing.”  
• On a snow day, Luna comes home to find her mom having sex. When Luna opens the bedroom door, “The head snapped up to look at her from between her mother’s legs. It was a man who appeared as shocked as Luna felt. A man Luna did not recognize.” Later, Luna reflects on the experience, angry that her mom was “slick and wild-haired and naked in bed with another man.”  
• Hunter uses a shed in the woods to hide his bow and arrows. One day, Hunter takes Luna there and they kiss. “But the longer she kissed Hunter, the more confident they both grew, and she was very intensely aware of the parts of his body that were pressing against her. An instinct took over. . .” Luna shows Hunter a condom that she stole from her mom and the two have sex, but it is marred because of Luna’s anger at her mother. “This was the anger that churned in her gut as she kicked off her jeans. Hunter was the escape she needed; she wanted to drown herself in his touch.”  
• After having sex with Hunter, Luna reflects. “Her anger towards her mother and her wish to be with Hunter had blurred together, until she knew only her body’s firecracker desire. . . If she was being perfectly honest, a part of her had wanted to do it to spite her mother.”  
• When Hunter’s brother, Cody, is secretive about a book, Hunter “hoped it wasn’t porn.”  
• Hunter invites Luna over to his house and they have sex. “This time they were slow and tender. They experimented with lips traversing skin, their touches drawing little violet petals. He drank in the honey-sweet smell.” When his parents come home, Luna climbs out the window.  

Violence  

• Rodney Wong is trying to find Hunter’s family because they owe him money. When he is first introduced, he is in a “water-damaged San Francisco basement, idly flicking a small knife open and shut, open and shut. . . The man strapped to the table in front of him was gasping, though nobody had done anything to affect his air supply. It was purely nerves.”  
• Wong enjoys the man’s fear, thinking, “All he’d had to do was make the suggestion of a sharpened blade wedging between the tip of a nail and the soft skin of the finger, and his subject had spiraled into a full-blown panic.” Wong gets a phone call and lets the man go.  
• Hunter’s father loses something valuable and blames Hunter for stealing it. Hunter’s father confronts him, but Hunter denies stealing it. “The blow came unexpectedly. Hunter fell against the fridge, registering only that his mother was shrieking for him to stop. His dad had punched him in the ear. His head was a clash of thunder.” Hunter missed two days of school because he had a “hideous bruise on the side of his face that would draw questions.” 
• Rodney Wong is looking for an artifact that Hunter’s father stole from him. “Wong set his foot down on Hunter’s knuckles.” When Wong threatens to hurt Hunter, the boy laughs and says, “My parents don’t give a shit.”  
• A strange crack appears in the earth. Around the crack, everything is dead and broken, and Luna can feel an evil presence inside the crack. One night, Luna and Hunter meet in the forest, and it begins to burn. Luna, Hunter, and Cody try to save a nest where the fireflies live. Rodney Wong tries to stop them. “A man Cody didn’t recognize grunted with pain as Luna kneed him somewhere questionable. He had a hand wrapped under her throat while she clawed at an object in his other fist.” Cody’s pet rabbit jumps on the man’s face. “It brought Luna the chance she needed to scramble away.” Rodney fell into the crack and disappeared.

Drugs and Alcohol  

• Luna goes to a party where a group of teens are “drunkenly singing along to ‘Losing My Religion.’”  
• Hunter uses an inhaler for asthma, although it doesn’t really help.  

Language  

• Profanity is used occasionally. Profanity includes ass, bullshit, fuck, hell, and pissed. 

Supernatural 

• The wind is portrayed as a supernatural being that brings Hunter money. When Hunter hears the wind, “he held himself still, waiting, his every muscle tense with curiosity. If he tried to look at it straight on, it would sneak away. . . The rustling stilled and silence returned, and then he looked. There they were. Two crisp twenty-dollar bills waiting beside his heel.”  
• One day, the wind followed Hunter into class and “knocked over the teacher’s podium. Papers had gone flying; a pencil cracked in two; the blackboard eraser landed against someone’s shoulder.” Hunter is given detention.  
• Hunter’s brother Cody has a book that has blank pages. However, sometimes when he opens it, the book’s writing is visible. For example, the wind opens the book to a page that says, “Houyi was the God of Archery, and his aim was always true. When he drew an arrow, he could tell. . . how to angle his shot, how to time his release. He never missed. . .” Cody thinks the book is telling the story of Hunter because he, too, never misses with a bow and arrow. 
• One night, Cody opens the book and finds a story about a girl named Chang’e. The girl worked in the emperor’s palace. When she tripped and dropped a glass teapot, she was banished “to live on the earth among ordinary mortals.” Through this book, Cody learns the Chinese mythology about the God of Archery. 
• Cody’s pet rabbit, Jadey, begins talking to him. Jadey explains that the magical book is his. The rabbit says, “I am the keeper of these stories. They are the records of the universe and its past. They are the truth of what is to come.”  
• Hunter’s mother made a bracelet for him and imbued it “with prayers and the properties of an impossible medicine.” She willed the bracelet to keep Hunter “safe. Keep him healthy and hidden.” The bracelet keeps the villain from seeing Hunter. 
• Fireflies often appear to Luna. When she has her period, “Fireflies were gathering below her navel, pressing close as if she, too, sparked with light. . . There was a tug, and a warmth, then release. Her breath came easier, as if bounds around her organs had been cut free. . . The fireflies had taken her cramps away.” 
• The fireflies often gather around Luna. “They had a way of finding the knots inside her and loosening them, softening the muscles, dissolving the pain.” 
• Rodney Wong shows Luna a planchette, which is similar to an Ouija board. Planchettes “were designed to hold a writing utensil, such as a brush. As the planchette moved, it would produce a mark, and these symbols or characters were then interpreted.” When Luna tries the planchette, it creates “a circle so perfect it should have been drawn using a compass. No human hand could be so precise.” The circle could represent many things. 
• To keep Rodny Wong from taking the artifact, Luna eats it. “Luna fed the stone between her lips, let its weight settle on her tongue. As her mouth closed over it, the texture changed. It melted like honey, like cream.” Afterwards, the fireflies gather around Luna, and she floats into the sky. Hunter shoots an arrow at her, but instead of bringing her back to earth, “Hunter rose up into the sky behind Luna, and her face twisted with dismay.” Luna realizes that she was not “flesh and bone.” She flew higher and higher until she landed in a crater on the moon. “Hunter passed overhead, still drifting. . .” Everyone forgets Luna and Hunter, except for Cody. 
• When Luna was a baby, she was often ill, and moonlight seemed to be the only thing that helped her. Her father would set Luna’s bottle outside “whenever the milk wouldn’t sour. . . when Luna drank from the moon-charged bottle, her energy was refreshed, and so was the color in her cheeks.” 

Spiritual Content  

• Luna discovers that fish and other underwater creatures will follow her “like [she is] the needle of a compass.” 
• When Rodney Wong was young, he received a Western Education from a Lutheran missionary. The missionary taught that magic was forbidden. The missionary said, “Any practice of the occult, those wicked arts, takes one away from God and serves the evil spirits.”