Review: Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm

Unbecoming

by Rebecca Scherm

Publisher: Viking Adult

Pages: 320

Format: ARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  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.


Kritters Thoughts:  An art heist and a love triangle make this book quite an interesting read.  Grace grew up in a small Tennessee town and has been tied to one boy her whole life, but there has been another she has thought of also.  Alls and Riley are the two boys that in different ways have driven her crazy - crazy enough to leave Tennessee and head to Paris.  

The book is broken into sections between the present moment in Paris and the past in Tennessee.  I appreciated getting both present moments and the past, the reader needed the details of the past to really know Grace and the boys.  I felt like the author included the perfect amount of present and past in the same book.

Grace tells her entire story and conveniently works with someone in Paris who also has a shady past and who she assumes she can confide in.  I sort of fell in like with Hanna - not love, but surely like.  I wouldn't mind a novella or something with Hanna and maybe even starting with her side of their story and after (no spoilers!).  

I thought it was definitely an interesting book, but there were some moments where I did not like Grace at all.  Sometimes I find it fun to dislike a character, but this wasn't that time.  She got a little repetitive and I wanted her to find self confidence and I felt like instead of getting stronger; she was melting down during the story.  


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Viking/Penguin.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.