A.G. Flitcher’s Cytrus Moonlight continues the Boone and Jacque series (book 4 of 4) with a thrilling journey through fear for the young characters – an exploration of psychological traumas and the uncanny manifestations in the surrealistic setting of Cytrus.
Disasters can stir up a society’s darkest fears, spurring suspicion and ignorance. Cytrus Moonlight grows and evolves from its character’s obsessive worries. Boone, Jacque, and Shammy have moved to Cytrus and are living reasonably normal lives until an inexplicable murder disrupts their peace. Jacque’s uncle Leon is killed by poison. As the evidence of the murder case is revealed, more underlying tunnels of unrest come to light in Cytrus.
The circumstances underlying Leon’s murder are unknown. However, Boone has a strange foreboding: he unexpectedly finds himself driving Leon’s car and feels a burning feeling on his neck. Boone begins to feel as if he is being watched – as if there are “a thousand eyes on him.”
Soon, a psychedelic drug is loosed on the town, driving its recipients to witness their greatest fears and embrace repressed emotions.
Mayor John Winterson invites the friends to a Christmas party, where the drug renders everyone into naked fools. The key suspect looks to be the eccentric, maniacal Dr. Button. However, the doctor’s own inexplicable death flips everything upside down.
Jacque notices a monster while detectives are trying to locate the key to the puzzle of death and fear. He is cautioned not to ask questions that draw the wrong kind of interest. Cytrus’ many secrets, and Jacque and Boone’s tendency to attract trouble, make them susceptible to certain people – people who want to prevent them from “causing history in town to repeat itself” just as they did in their former town Saddleton.
This story’s Magical Realism presents a farcical and satirical tone, with dark humor that never leaves the narrative’s surface.
There is a consistent appearance of a bathos element in the YA urban fiction – a quick transition from a serious topic to dramatic dry humor. This ambiguity in the gravity of certain events implies a reflection of the traumatic brains of characters, which manifest themselves much more in a bizarre and topsy-turvy Cytrus. The combination produces an unreal atmosphere throughout the story – much like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985).
This thriller gently explores the idea of free will vs. fate.
Boone and Shammy want to live a calm existence free of the turbulence and trauma they tend to attract, but numerous circumstances lead them along a path that looks to take them to their fate.
Likewise, trauma remains an underlying theme throughout the story, as the novel sheds light on some of the characters’ psychological anguish. Be it Boone’s attempt to overcome past traumas, Jacque and Xantia’s explicit acknowledgment and embrace of their identities as pansexual and transgender, or Myamirah’s fear of Cytrus’ peace, the pent-up emotions spill out profoundly.
Boone and Jacque: Cytrus Moonlight introduces some new bizarre characters while recalling some old ones from the prequel. Flitcher fills the novel with scenes and an atmosphere that is visually and auditorily stimulating, letting characters voice up their innermost thoughts and feelings. The mystery persists till the end as Cytrus’ Pandora’s Box of puzzles keeps readers guessing about the whys of many events and what awaits Boone and Jacque inside.
The Boon and Jacque series achieved Finalist status in the OZMA Fantasy Fiction, 2021 CIBA Awards.
