My Rating: 4.5
An unsolved murder of a boy who was found on the grounds of a girls school. A year later, Holly Mackey arrives in Stephen Moran's office with a photo of the boy with the caption: “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.” Stephen, along with Detective Antoinette Conway, reopens the case—beneath the watchful eye of Holly’s father, fellow detective Frank Mackey.
This took me a while to get into - perhaps due to the narration switching to a bunch of immature annoying high school girls. I can say that French captures the high school drama well! Once I understood the alternate story-lines, I got in to it and enjoyed it a lot. I love feeling like I know all these Detectives as French does such an amazing job of building their characters. I am sad that I only have a couple more books left in this series. Tana, you need to write faster!! :-)
An unsolved murder of a boy who was found on the grounds of a girls school. A year later, Holly Mackey arrives in Stephen Moran's office with a photo of the boy with the caption: “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.” Stephen, along with Detective Antoinette Conway, reopens the case—beneath the watchful eye of Holly’s father, fellow detective Frank Mackey.
This took me a while to get into - perhaps due to the narration switching to a bunch of immature annoying high school girls. I can say that French captures the high school drama well! Once I understood the alternate story-lines, I got in to it and enjoyed it a lot. I love feeling like I know all these Detectives as French does such an amazing job of building their characters. I am sad that I only have a couple more books left in this series. Tana, you need to write faster!! :-)
A year in France brings a young American new reserves of sympathy and maturity in this poised, accomplished first novel. Nineteen-year-old Rosie, King's sensitive narrator, arrives in Paris on the first day of the school year, set for her job as the Tivot family's au pair. The other au pairs (in French usage, filles) are cosmopolitan students drawn to French culture. Rosie, however, has come here to flee her past: she became pregnant as a deliberate act of charity, giving up her baby so her infertile sister could have a child. But that decision has only heightened her omnipresent sense of loss. Her months with the Tivot family on their houseboat bring her new and difficult human connections: to the inquisitive, needy 12-year-old Lola and her younger brother, Guillaume; to their unhappy, astringent mother, Nicole; and to their father, Marc. This is a light easy read yet contains much more than meets the eye. Very enjoyable and well written. As one reviewer said, "it left us feeling as we've become fluent in a foreign language".
This is about the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce a newspaper—and one woman who reads it religiously, if belatedly. Although the chapters clearly intersect, it reads like a short story. In the opening chapter, aging, dissolute Paris correspondent Lloyd Burko pressures his estranged son to leak information from the French Foreign Ministry, and in the process unearths startling family fare that won't sell a single edition. Obit writer Arthur Gopal, whose overarching goal at the paper is indolence, encounters personal tragedy and, with it, unexpected career ambition. Late in the book, as the paper buckles, recently laid-off copyeditor Dave Belling seduces the CFO who fired him. Throughout, the founding publisher's progeny stagger under a heritage they don't understand. As the ragtag staff faces down the implications of the paper's tilt into oblivion, there are more than enough sublime moments, unexpected turns and sheer inky wretchedness to warrant putting this on the shelf next to other great newspaper novels. Despite my not enjoying short stories, I did find this book very engagine. If you enjoy short stories, you will love this book.