Grace a.k.a. Julie has come a long way from
Garland,Tennessee. Now living in a shabby rented room in
Paris, she works for a less than scrupulous employer. She
works in a grubby antique shop, Zanuso and Filles,
restoring and mending things like teapots, resetting
jewels
in bracelets and necklaces. Barely making ends
meet.
At night she watches the news from Garland waiting
for the release of two prisoners, Riley and his best
friend,
Alls. They were sent to prison for a break-in at a
historical museum in Garland that Grace planned and stole
a
painting from. She was never implicated. The story about
what happens next, has many twists and turns, many
surprises and holds your interest as you turn those pages
faster and faster to the finale.
"Julie" works with Hannah, a 34 year old Polish gal that
treats her like an unwanted little sister but in time
Grace
begins to tell her about Riley, Alls and the robbery.
UNBECOMING is a mix of flashbacks and present day
narration.
It is the story of Grace and her life traveling back and
forth from past to present.
Grace had no family bonds and fell in love with Riley
Graham, son of Dr. and Mrs. Graham when she was in the
fourth
grade. She loved being with his family and she became the
daughter Mrs. Graham never had. She secretly married
Riley
when she was eighteen. Grace seemed too needy, selfish
and self-
absorbed. Riley was easy-going, a bumbling kind of guy,
who lived to paint buildings. When he sold his
paintings,
he blew his money on a "lemon" of a car, and wanted to do
the art heist at the museum to impress Grace.
Rebecca Scherm weaves an intricately twisted tale filled
with
lies, lies, and more lies, betrayals, and lust. I did not
like Grace. Grace was married to one man but in love with
Alls, his best friend. Grace is a true chameleon who can
change her behavior to please others and can re-invent
herself too easily.
UNBECOMING is about so many things;
growing up, first love, how to carve out a place for
yourself, and how to gain control if you lose it. I liked
Alls and the ending was a surprise to me. UNBECOMING was
a
very different book with characters I found hard to
relate
to, but the complicated plot was engaging.
A major debut novel of psychological suspense about a daring
art heist, a cat-and-mouse waiting game, and a small-town
girl\'s mesmerizing transformation
On the grubby outskirts of Paris, Grace restores
bric-a-brac, mends teapots, re-sets gems. She calls herself
Julie, says she's from California, and slips back to a
rented room at night. Regularly, furtively, she checks the
hometown paper on the Internet. Home is Garland, Tennessee,
and there, two young men have just been paroled. One, she
married; the other, she's in love with. Both were jailed for
a crime that Grace herself planned in exacting detail. The
heist went bad-but not before she was on a plane to Prague
with a stolen canvas rolled in her bag. And so, in Paris,
begins a cat-and-mouse waiting game as Grace's web of
deception and lies unravels-and she becomes another young
woman entirely.
Unbecoming is an intricately plotted and
psychologically nuanced heist novel that turns on suspense
and slippery identity. With echoes of Alfred Hitchcock and
Patricia Highsmith, Rebecca Scherm's mesmerizing debut is
sure to entrance fans of Gillian Flynn, Marisha Pessl, and
Donna Tartt.
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