Searching For Jimmy Page by Christy Alexander Hallberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I’m a fan of music novels. Christy Alexander Hallberg’s Searching for Jimmy Page is a new favorite. To bring music alive via a silent, two-dimensional space isn’t an easy thing to do, but Hallberg does it well with this story. It’s fast-paced and palpable, and at the same time it’s dreamlike, ethereal. In this, the novel is itself like a Led Zeppelin song—or maybe like an album of previously unreleased Zeppelin tracks.

Luna Kane is a believable and engaging character, coming of age in a recognizable world that is fuller of pain than of joy, fuller of questions than of answers, and yet fuller of mystery than of misery. Hers is a world in which the living and the dead wield equal influence—or at least attempt to do so. It would be a lot for a young woman to navigate alone, but she receives significant support and grounding from Full River Connie and London Peter, both vivid characters.

Searching for Jimmy Page is a rewarding reading experience. I began it as a “car read,” a world I would enter when waiting here or there (a drive-thru, for example), but by the time Luna left Full River on the bus, I took the book from the car and was all in for the ride to the end.



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