ABOUT THE BOOK

Twenty-eight seconds.

In less than half a minute, a home-security camera captures the hidden resolve in fourteen-year-old Carly Liddell as she fends off a vicious attack just inside her own front door. The video of her heroic escape appears online and goes viral. As the view count climbs, the lives of four desperate people will be forever changed by what’s just barely visible in the corner of the shot.

Carly’s stepfather is spurred to protect his darkest secret: how a stolen painting—four hundred years old, by a master of the Dutch Golden Age—has come to hang in his suburban foyer. The art dealer, left for dead when the painting vanished, sees a chance to buy back her life. And the double-crossed enforcer renews the hunt to deliver the treasure to his billionaire patrons—even if he has to kill to succeed.

But it’s Carly herself, hailed as a social-media hero, whose new perspective gives her the courage to uncover the truth as the secrets and lies tear her family apart.

MY REVIEW

Sparks, fuses. Old-dynamite wrong.

I wondered about the plot at first because I’m not a big fan of art heist stories, but it’s more than that. It’s about the guilty and innocent characters and how they are dealing with the secrets coming to light from an incident caught on video.

Jamie Mason is a wonderful writer. Her descriptive prose is poetic and gives the reader a great sense of who the character is and what they are thinking.

The characters are everything from innocent to evil and intuitive to manipulative. My favorite is Carly who is fourteen and mature for her age. Not only does she kick an attacker’s ass which is caught on video, but she puts the most seasoned criminals to shame. 

This is a gripping read about secrets, revenge, and a painting to literally die for. A great summer read!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jamie Mason does not like writing about herself in the third person. She has no idea how it ever became the standard for autobiographical summaries. Jamie thinks that if her mother were writing this, or her sister, or her friend Jess, or the New York Times, it would be substantially less creepy.

Jamie Mason was born in Oklahoma City, but has always named Alexandria, Virginia and the greater DC metropolitan area as her hometown. She grew up in the shadow of the Pentagon (a shadow somehow darker and longer than the shade given off by lesser five-story buildings.) This might explain a few things about her suspicious nature.

Follow Jamie on her website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.