Susan Kiernan-Lewis

Kiernan-Lewis is an accomplished author of several books and even some series. The initial presentation of the plot did not much attract me, however, I was drawn into the story and am glad that I did explore this offering. The premise is of a family with a 10 year-old son going on vacation to Ireland when a nuclear bomb explodes over London which is near enough to fry all electronics in Ireland with the electro-magnetic pulse that results from a near explosion of such bombs.
The couple is therefore thrown into a state of bewilderment on how to survive, if the United States had also been so attacked and how could they ultimately return home. K-L masterfully leads the couple and their son through the labyrinthine ways of survival in a pre-electric (much less electronic!) society.
It felt like a dystopian novel...and dystopian stories seldom hold my interest...but this one did. To tell you more would require me to put up a "***spoiler alert***", so I will forebear from following the plot. Some of the twists feel stretched, but one premise is that Sarah, the wife, had been an accomplished horse-woman prior to their arrival. Unlikely, but far from impossible...but it is sort of a necessary reality to allow the progression of the story.
K-L is an accomplished author, so you are in good hands as you go through the twists and turns.… (mehr)

Maggie Newberry, an independent woman and entrepreneur as a freelance advertising copywriter in Atlanta, is not used to being vulnerable or helpless. However, needing answers in a country where you don’t speak the language is only the start of complications after identifying her sister Elise’s body in a French morgue. As a dutiful daughter, Maggie had accepted her father’s request to fly to France to make the identification and bring her sister home. Maggie has multiple questions, and the police give her very little information. How did this happen? Why? Who? Will she ever learn the truth?

An armchair traveler’s delight from Atlanta to Cannes and intrigue leads to Nice, Montmartre, and Paris. Air and rail travel, taxis, walks, and well-known landmarks add to the scenes. Maggie is persistent, courageous, resolute, trying to reconcile memories of her sister with the descriptions and facts learned and baffled by her responses to a man named Laurent. There are twists and turns building suspense, and although some of my armchair sleuthing was accurate, not all was correct. I’m intrigued to read more of the series.

Note: I recommend the mystery but disagree with marketing it as a cozy mystery.… (mehr)

A cozy mystery featuring a former American advertising executive turned wife and mother now living in France and blogging about the family vineyard. Maggie's long-time friend invites her to join them at the advertising awards in Cannes where she gets pulled into a murder mystery.

This is the first book with this character that I've read (it's #10 in the series) so I don't know if the insecurity Maggie shows here is due to the environment or if it's part of her character. I can see Maggie giving weight to something a long-time friend observes.

I have a harder time with Maggie not keeping the prior commitment she made to her friend Danielle to help organize the Lavender Fete and that she keeps rationalizing staying away from her husband and children.

I didn't think the book particularly well written. Part of it seems formulaic and part of it just seems simplified. Not having read other books in the series, I can't tell for sure if each book follows the same pattern. I wouldn't go actively seek out other books in the series.… (mehr)

I stuck with this one for longer than I should have because it showed promise. Then I got to a point where the murderer was revealed to readers, and we weren't even halfway through. I decided it wasn't worth continuing. I have not read earlier installments. The sleuth Maggie goes to Saint-Rémy to visit her author friend who is introducing her to her agent. After Maggie returns home, the very pregnant 14-year-old niece shows up at Maggie's house where she has her baby. When the woman is found murdered, suspicious immediately goes to the niece who claims she did not do it. She was, however, holding the knife and had wished her aunt dead earlier. Maggie sets out to investigate and is threatened by the investigating officer with jail if she doesn't leave the premises. This just didn't work for me, and I didn't finish it because the author revealed too much too early, and I was not engaged in it.… (mehr)