A fast, fun Paris adventure with a strong heroine and series potential.
In this debut novel, a young spy must thwart an international art theft while saving the family business.
Twelve-year-old Simone LaFray lives in Paris with her father, sister, and (often absent) mother. Simone’s mom is the top agent for France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Simone is following in her footsteps, but she also helps her dad in the kitchen of LaFray’s Patisserie—the family business established by her great-great-great-grandfather. Simone is a quiet child; she reads a lot and dislikes attention. Even her best (and only) friend, “The V,” proves too much company for her except in small doses. Simone is obsessively punctual and compulsively observant. Mature for her age, she is at once a rather dour big sister, a dutiful and responsible daughter, and a preternaturally talented analyst. With her mom out of the country, Simone is tasked with her first field assignment: tracking down world-renowned thief la Volpe Rossa (the Red Fox) before he can steal a valuable painting from the Musée d’Orsay. The Fox is a master of concealment, identifiable only by his bright red hair. He should be as unknown to Simone as she is to him. Is it a coincidence, then, that she spies a red-haired stranger staking out the patisserie? When the precious family recipe books are stolen, Simone must use all of her intellect—and overcome some of her inhibitions—to put things right. O’Farrell has crafted a bright, breezy middle-grade romp, light on the mystery element but uplifted by its Paris setting and a splendid cast of characters. Some of these are larger than life—The V and Simone’s sister, for instance—but not too much so. Simone’s dad is an authentic parental figure (while still every bit the hapless but brilliant chocolatier), and she is a protagonist whom young readers will take to heart. Her everyday positive qualities are manifest, as are her differences, and the author has her succeed because of who she is, not in spite of it. Narrated in the first person, the story bubbles along with Simone’s inner thoughts, juxtaposing her true self with what she shows to the outside world. Though more down-to-earth, this novel exhibits shades of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books.
A fast, fun Paris adventure with a strong heroine and series potential.Pub Date: May 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947860-34-6
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Brandylane Publishers, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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