The Girl from the Grand Hotel by Camille Aubray

April 29, 2024

The Girl from the Grand Hotel by Camille Aubray

When her grandmother refuses to pay for her final year of college, Annabel Falcone travels from America to the French Riviera to work at her uncle's hotel. It's August 1939, and the first ever Cannes Film Festival is about to get underway, with celebrities, athletes, and actors from all over the world in attendance. When a German tennis star is found dead in his hotel room, Annabel begins to suspect that there is more going on than just a big celebrity party.

Inspired by real events and the first failed Cannes Film Festival. Slow moving Anna plot that takes a long time to get anywhere. Also, Annabel is kind of bland. There are almost too many famous names dropped into the story. If you read everything about the golden age of Hollywood, you will probably enjoy this one. If not, maybe skip it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

French Riviera

The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Santlofer

December 6, 2023

The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Santlofer

In Paris in 1944, an artist paints a portrait of his wife over a Van Gogh painting, hiding the original work from the Nazis. Over 75 years later, the picture resurfaces in upstate New York, where a woman named Alex Verde buys it at an antique store. When they discover the hidden Van Gogh, Alex and her boyfriend Luke Perrone, an artist and art history professor, can't figure out how the painting got there. They enlist the help of an INTERPOL agent and follow him to Amsterdam, where the police and INTERPOL are trying to catch a major dealer in stolen art looted by the Nazis.

I didn't enjoy this book that much because it's more of an espionage novel than a book about art theft, and I can never figure out what's going on in spy books. Everyone has a code name, everyone is spying on everyone else and double-crossing them. The reader gets quite the tour of Amsterdam, complete with a visit to the Anne Frank House, plus we get a lecture on looted Nazi artwork. Some of the main characters appeared in Santlofer's previous novel The Last Mona Lisa. Overall, just meh.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Amsterdam