A Pocketful of Stardust

https://optimumm.blog/2019/09/15/review-of-a-pocketful-of-stardust-by-p-barnaby-rowan-speedwell/

Noah is happy with his life in New York until a phone call from his hometown announced that his father had died, and he has to get his father succession and inheritance in order.
He left New York suddenly and went back home to bury his only parent. Soon he realizes that his father’s bookstore is almost at bankruptcy and Noah doesn’t know how to save it or if he wants to save it. Meeting Henry, the ghost, and Kyle his hot and shy neighbor might help him, but when the time comes, Noah will have to make a decision between the nostalgia of his childhood and the reality of his future.
A Pocketful of Stardust by JP Barnaby and Rowan Speedwell was my first book by both of the authors.

It was a sweet and beautiful story, with a rainbow of feelings. The book was told from Noah’s POV, and we follow him in his journey. We’re with him at each step, and we share his pain with him, along with tears, love, and happiness. I really appreciated how the authors had described all the emotions of the MCs well.

Noah and Kyle are made for each other. Noah is confident, but Kyle is stronger, he has a horrible and traumatic past that he struggles to deal with, until Noah helps him. I loved how they’re different but also how they’re similar. I loved Kyle. He touched me with his shyness, and his purity moved me. They are very sweet and adorable, two kind souls who met and recognized each other.

The authors transcribed very well, also, all the small town atmosphere, with a strong community ready to help and support each other. I loved it, in the crazy world where we live nowadays, we need that reminder that there’s still good people around us.
The writing was good, even if sometimes a little bit repetitive, I was still hooked in the story.

Even if it wasn’t all candies and rainbows, this book was sweet, beautiful and I really had a good time with them.
4 Stars for them

Here’s high praise: JP Barnaby and Rowan Speedwell’s enchanting “A Pocketful of Stardust” sped me happily through bronchitis. For those hours I forgot my misery. It reads so smoothly and breezily I savored every moment.

This is the story of Noah, a young man working in New York, whose beloved father dies too early, leaving him a house and bookstore in their Georgia hometown. Both properties are close to foreclosure. While in grief Noah must learn how to run the store and decide whether he wants to keep it … assuming he can possibly earn the necessary 50k to meet his one month loan deadline.

Along the way, Noah meets Kyle, a beguilingly helpful man with a mysterious and horrific past; Henry, the bookstore ghost; plus, a supportive cast of sweet-tea-drinking small-town characters. As Noah lets himself love them, he realizes what is and isn’t important. Unfortunately, he also encounters the specter of homophobia and old enemies. Luckily, he’s reminded of his values with well-timed quotes peppered throughout, like Martin Luther King’s, “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“A Pocketful of Stardust” is about true faith, which (as we know) must be backed up by works. Barnaby and Speedwell show what it might take for a clueless man to honor his father’s legacy, the difficulties of cataloging and inventorying, online sales, long hours of paperwork, co-existing with other vendors, and marketing, etc. Yet these details entrance us because they take time, which is the one thing Noah and Kyle simply don’t have. Will they make the deadline?

Speedwell and Barnaby invest us in the bookstore, and its history, the town, even the big sloppy dog, with perfectly executed quirky portrayals that pull us in. Here’s a charming southern description of rubbing that dog’s belly. “Noah…scratched his way from the neck down, making sure to miss the dog’s frank and beans.”

Despite “A Pocketful of Stardust’s” spectral light-heartedness, tension builds. Because Kyle’s past arrives, just as the bookstore’s loan comes due! We know there will be conflict, just not how badly it will end. Can two young men, barely discovering themselves and each other, find a way to make peace with the unfair hands they’ve been dealt? Just maybe, assisted by a ghost and a refined elderly fine-baking, rifle-toting Southern woman to count upon.

Barnaby and Speedwell never dramatize emotions, yet we experience Noah and Kyle’s sadness, like at Noah’s dad’s memorial at his home, when Noah reacts. “He wanted to yell at them that his father had lost his life right there where their dirty shoes scuffed over the tile. But he caught himself because it was ridiculous. It was so ridiculous.” And we equally experience the joy of Noah and Kyle’s discovery… a tentative attraction, a first kiss, the awkwardness of their first intimacy, which like real life doesn’t go as planned, but is marvelous never-the-less.

Do you need a dose of common decency? How about love that grows slowly and purely? Or the struggle for a life we can be proud to call our own? With their first installment in the Aster series, JP Barnaby and Rowan Speedwell have hit a home run of Americana – easy reading, appropriate for young adults, sweet, fulfilling and brimming with warmth, just like the hot coffee delights Kyle crafts for their bookstore.

** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Reviewed for Divine Magazine

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A Pocketful of Stardust (Aster #1) by J.P. Barnaby and Rowan Speedwell
★★★★★
234 Pages
POV: 3rd person, one character POV
Content Warning: deals with loss of parent, grief, off-page domestic/child abuse


With a dose of southern charm, and a blend of genres – from contemporary romance, a mystery, a ghost story, and a journey of self-discovery – A Pocketful of Stardust has everything to take you on an emotional journey. It may have a lot of elements, but it has even more heart.

The story is primarily a contemporary romance, about Noah. His life is ticking along, until he gets that phone call – his father has died, suddenly. He goes home, to all those conflicting emotions of 'why didn't I come home more often' and 'I should have known' and 'how do I go on without him?'. As he tries to navigate this exhausting wheel of emotion and stress and responsibility, a kaleidoscope of events derail his already shattered world; he loses his job, he meets Kyle, and he inherits a house and a bookstore.

Though the story has the supernatural element of a ghost, and deals with a few criminal elements, it is primarily a story about Noah discovering himself, his strength, his ability to go on. The story spends a very generous and heartbreaking 13% revolving around Noah dealing with his father's death. I love that. Because, this is a HUGE event in his life, and it was treated as such. It wasn't something washed over or ignored after a while, it was the main focus of the story. How Noah dealt with losing his father and the consequences of that loss. Because of that, it's not an easy easy.

It's nowhere near the lighthearted and sort-of magical story that I expected from the cover. BUT, it is heartwarming, heartbreaking, and it will leave you sobbing into a box of tissues, craving some healing chocolate and – for me, as I lost my dog last year – wishing there was still that fur-covered pup to cuddle. It will make you need comfort, and give you comfort at the same time.

It utterly broke my heart. But, I'll admit, the worst part was when Jake came home. I've owned dogs all my life and I've lost more than a few of them; seeing Jake walk into that house and search for Noah's dad was the most heartbreaking part of the novel, and it's making me cry right now, just remembering it. In that moment, I knew I was going to love this book. It wasn't the glasses on the floor, though they smashed my heart with a hammer; it was Jake.

Alright, yes...I cried a lot, actually. The glasses, Jake coming home, even Kyle made me cry sometimes because he was just so sweet and clueless and alone, Miss Edna and Thad, and then...Henry, and that last bit at the end at the church... Yeah, I cried a lot.

I loved the respect that was given to each of the very serious issues raised throughout the book, without it becoming lecturing – the Syrian refugee, cultism, domestic abuse, child abuse, civil rights, religious persecution, equality, race, and sexuality. They were all handled with care, but without minimising or overshadowing them, without stooping to using them as a tool to add more diversity without understanding them.

When it comes to characters, you can't ask for a better bunch. Miss Edna, with her rifle friends and sweetness; innocent and sweetly clueless Kyle; outrageous and loveable Thad; brusk and intriguing Cooper; and the smart and sophisticated Henry. I loved each and every one of them.

Honestly, this is my first book by JP Barnaby, and I chose it because of Rowan Speedwell. I've learned that I can never be disappointed by a book by Rowan Speedwell, and – if this book is any indication of talent – then I've just added JP Barnaby to my list of “must read” authors, because...wow. The writing style was exactly up my alley. The blend of genres was utterly perfect and engaging. The characters were wonderful, heartfelt and real, with a huge diversity of personalities, sexuality, gender, strength, race, and quirks. The plot had a perfect pace, for me. It was always moving along with some even or other and it was always building the story with every event. Nothing was pointless or unexplained.

In the end, what can I say? I loved it. I laughed, cried, broke my heart, and it made me heartsick for people lost and pets no longer with me. Every character had their place, their purpose, and has forged a place in my heart. I can't wait for the next book in Aster.

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Favourite Quotes

“A wracking moan shook him, and he cried harder, grief and loneliness ganging up on him and pounding him into the ground until he wanted to yell “Enough!” and have all this end.
And then warm lips brushed his ear and Kyle’s sweet voice said, “I’ve got you. Let go,” and he did, letting everything go until he lay limp and exhausted in Kyle’s arms.”

Reviewed by Sammy for Diverse Reader

Some of the best memories Noah Hitchens had was reading with his father in their bookstore, Stardust. Those cherished thoughts kept Noah warm many a night while he worked at a frantic pace at a job he didn’t really love in the heart of New York City—a far cry from the quiet little town of Aster where he grew up. When the news came that his beloved father had passed away, a grief stricken Noah returned home to face both the burial of his only parent and the mountain of debt he’d left behind in the tiny little bookstore they both loved. An extension might help Noah both decide exactly whether or not he wanted to move back home and keep the book store alive and also give him some breathing room just to grapple with his grief but it wasn’t to be so. A former schoolmate and bully held the only way Noah could see to getting the large debt repaid and the guy took absolute glee in letting Noah know he had very little chance of making the deadline for repayment.

With little hope, Noah’s life was about to change—first in the mystical sense and next in the physical one. A ghost would help steer him in his decision making and a mysterious young man would become the friend he needed. But with all the help Noah still might be in water too deep to tread successfully.

Please forgive the bare bones synopsis but I really don’t want to give away too much of this very entertaining romance/mystery novel, A Pocketful of Stardust, by J.P. Barnaby and Rowan Speedwell. Suffice it to say that this story was a quick read for me primarily because these two authors are able to so smoothly craft characters who immediately capture your attention and your emotions. Both Noah and Kyle were just lovely—both a bit lost and in need of real comfort and both uncertain where their future lay. There attraction is gradual and tenderly written with Kyle exploring so much of his new feelings with both a bit of awe and a bit of dread. While Noah grieves and Kyle unravels the mystery surrounding his life for Noah to understand, the ghost, Henry, provides some much needed humor and a few breaks from the ongoing drama that surrounds the future of the bookstore.

The side cast of characters in this novel was just priceless. I loved the older women—their strength, their know-how and their perseverance. They took care of Noah and Kyle both and I loved that while they were constantly present their attentions were never cloying or interfering—they were just there as supportive and steadying companions. While I really enjoyed this novel there were a few problems along the way. The first was the strange introduction of the ghost and the seeming lack of shock or fear on Noah’s part. I thought it really odd that those moments felt so blasé as if Noah saw ghosts all the time. The other element had to do with the hierarchy at the bank and how this story was actually resolved. I can’t go into much detail without ruining the ending but suffice it to say that I thought it was rather strange that the VP of the bank could talk down the President and chief loan officer. That didn’t quite ring true to me as both the aforementioned were painted as such devious bad elements. However, other than those few niggles, I felt this story was a really lovely romance with a sinister mystery element that kept the whole thing moving along quite nicely.

By all indications, A Pocketful Of Stardust is the first in a new series by two wonderfully strong authors and I am looking forward to reading more by this dynamic duo.