Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More

 Dec. 26, 2021

I loved both the historical and modern-day plots!  Wills is an excellent storyteller and her characters come to life.  They grab the reader and won’t let go! She captures place and time in poetic prose.  I felt like I was there, in both time periods, bearing witness. In fact, I would love to see it be developed into a movie!

I became a fan of Wills’ writing from the first novel I read of hers.  It was The Summer Before the Storm, book 1 of her ‘Muskoka’ series.  I highly recommend the series and Moon Hall.  If you love historical fiction and excellent character development, you will love Gabriele Wills!

I give Moon Hall 5 out of 5 stars!

The Lindsay Daily Post, Dec. 13, 2005

by Theresa Kelly, Bobcaygeon News Columnist

I read a book that I just loved so much that I read it a second time and have had very interesting e-mail chats with the author. Gabriele Wills wrote A Place To Call Home, an historical novel of early Irish immigrants covering five decades and two generations, set in her home town of Lindsay. This would be a wonderful Christmas present for anyone with any interest in local roots.

She followed this with another book entitled Moon Hall, set in the Ottawa Valley, and is currently researching and writing another set in Muskoka in the summer of 1914.

While A Place To Call Home is geographically oriented, it is more incidental that the setting for Moon Hall is the Ottawa Valley.

A Toronto girl, a writer of popular fiction, moves to an old stone mansion, "Moon Hall," to get away from it all, but her illusions about idyllic country life are soon challenged by reality. Life is certainly different in a rural community of farmers, especially when you toss in a few hippies and some yuppies. A 100 year old diary found in Moon Hall sets the scene for a haunting tale of relationships in crisis.

Again, it was a book I couldn’t put down once I’d started it. The pair would be a really nice Christmas gift.

I asked Gabriele, "How do you enforce the discipline on yourself to get through writing a book?"

"The research stimulates ideas and characters," she said. " I find that I never end up with what I had originally envisioned, as my characters start to take over the tale and dictate the conflicts and interactions. It’s great fun, for I’m never quite sure where they will take me. So it’s an adventure for me as well!"