PICKPOCKET

A troubled Canadian teen is packed off to stay with his great-uncle in Nice, France, for the summer in this reluctant reader offering.

After the death of his sister, Jean-Luc took up with new friends who are constantly getting into trouble. When his fed-up parents return from a trip to find their house trashed by a party Jean-Luc threw, they send him off to work with Henri, a caterer, so that he can earn the money to reimburse them for the damage. Jean-Luc’s path back from being the bad kid is pretty assured from the start, as his self-awareness and empathy for others peek through in small ways, finally emerging in full when he learns about the terrible situation of a beautiful girl named Selina. They meet when she picks his pocket, and, when he learns she is being exploited and abused, he decides he has to help her. The vivid setting of Old Nice is its own character in this quickly paced novel, and the plotting moves along steadily until it ends on an abrupt note. Jean-Luc and his co-worker Marcel, who spends much of the novel working up the nerve to ask out a girl he likes, are the most fleshed-out characters. Unfortunately, Selina seems to only be there to be saved. Characters seem to be White by default.

An accessible, engaging tale of redemption.