I have been previously underwhelmed by Laura Florand, but was heartily encouraged to try, in particular, this and one of her other novels as a better representation of her potential. I’m now very scared I am going to be shunned. Here is the plot summary — it’s basically You’ve Got Mail — in Goodreads’ words: “Welcome to La Maison des Sorcieres. Where the window display is an enchanted forest of sweets, a collection of conical hats delights the eye and the habitues nibble chocolate witches […]
A contemporary romance with counter-terrorism and knife-throwing
Violette Lenoir is twenty-eight and a two-star Michelin chef in her own restaurant. Don’t worry if you don’t remember that, you will be reminded at least five times over the course of the narrative. Of course, she has every right to be proud, having worked her ass off in kitchens since she was fifteen, fighting sexism and discrimination every step of the way to prove herself. When a stranger breaks into her restaurant late at night, as she’s about to leave, she’s not intimidated in […]
Someone pay me to travel around Europe eating tasty food and kissing cute boys.
Lucy Knisley is a delightful, talented human being, and I will read every book she chooses to publish. This particular book is a record of her travels to Europe over the summer of 2011. She was invited to speak at a Norwegian comics convention in Bergen, and used the opportunity to travel to Sweden to visit a man she’d met several weeks before when he was vacationing in New York City. She also travels to France (Paris, and another city of which I’ve since forgotten […]
A travelogue to Paris in comic form.
I’ve been a fan of Lucy Knisley’s since probably around 2007, actually, which is when she published this travelogue of her time in Paris with her mother, when both of them were celebrating special birthdays. Lucy was turning twenty-two, just on the verge of graduating from college, and her mother was turning fifty. They spent five weeks living in a tiny Parisian apartment, going to see museums, and eating mounds and mounds of French food. Honestly, I don’t even remember where or how I found […]
If Henning Mankell were French
Back in 2007 when I first went on Goodreads, I remember putting a Fred Vargas novel, Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, on my to-read list. I think it was a recommendation through Powell’s Daily Dose, an e-mail I still look forward to every day. Though the novel sounded great, I had a lot of trouble tracking it down through my local library so it ended up being buried under the massive number of to-read books that followed (887 at last look!). It was […]
Jack Reacher in Europe, with an unexpected twist
While I won’t claim it’s his best, or even that great, I found this latest (19th) Jack Reacher story an intriguing enough premise, a rapid page-turner (including the ballistics details which others found boring but which I enjoyed), a truly scary bad guy, and an unexpected punch-to-the-gut ending. Someone has taken a long-distance shot at the French president, but special bullet-proof glass protected him from assassination. The CIA decides, along with Europe’s top intelligence agencies, that this was just a practice run aimed at […]
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