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December 1, 2024
Harman, who won the won the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for this buzzy debut (already optioned for TV), writes about Florence, mother of 10-year-old Dylan. She has no real skills and is unpopular with the other school moms. But when a boy who bullied Dylan disappears, and all signs point to her son's involvement, Florence dives into the case. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2024 Library Journal
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from December 16, 2024
Journalist Harman debuts with a funny, fast-paced blend of domestic thriller and social satire. Former girl group singer Florence “Flo” Grimes, now a hot mess of a single mom, is painfully aware that she and her 10-year-old son, Dylan, are pariahs at his posh North London school, St. Angeles—and that’s before the frequently bullied boy becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his main tormentor. “The missing boy is ten-year-old Alfie Risby,” Flo narrates in the novel’s opening sentence, “and to be perfectly honest with you, he’s a little shit.” But her schadenfreude is tempered by mounting suspicion that Dylan, at minimum, knows more about the incident than he’s letting on. When cops show up to question Dylan, Flo has already sent him for an extended visit with her ex-husband, deciding the best way to clear his name will be to solve the mystery herself. Unfortunately, her skill set—which includes passably covering the Mariah Carey canon—seems woefully inadequate for sleuthing, which makes her new, fellow American friend Jenny Choi a godsend, given Jenny’s still-burning teen dream of being a PI. It’s not all diet gin-and-tonics and giggles for the pair, though—especially once their digging turns up dirty secrets about Alfie’s parents and St. Angeles itself. Harman’s winning protagonist, page-turning plot, and delightfully irreverent tone will have readers clamoring for a sequel. Agent: Alyssa Reuben, WME.
February 1, 2025
Florence left a poor life in Florida for London via long, complicated means; she's a badly treated ex-member of a girl band, a divorced, single mother of 10-year-old Dylan, and totally out of place in the mothers group at his posh boys school. Since her divorce and ouster from the band, her life has been a total mess, except of course for Dylan. She has no life, she barely has an income, and her flat is held together with the aid of Adam, her policeman neighbor. When Alfie, a bully and her son's nemesis, disappears on a school trip, Florence keeps evidence that Dylan may be involved to herself. She and Jenny, another expat mom and tightly wound, Stanford-grad attorney, join together to investigate, though Florence doesn't share all. There are secret, illegitimate sons, lying, wealthy parents, and corruption on many levels, as well as Florence's sister's wedding. Florence's methods are neither conventional nor honorable, but in the end she is successful. This is a zany romp featuring a less-than-perfect character readers will root for.
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February 15, 2025
A former girl-band singer adrift in her life and career gets drawn into a missing persons case involving the "little shit" who's been bullying her 10-year-old son in this debut novel. Florence Grimes isn't like the other mothers at St. Angeles, the posh London school her son, Dylan, attends. A divorc�e and almost-pop star from Florida, she runs an online balloon delivery service and dreams of making a Mariah Carey-style comeback. Her going-nowhere-fast life suddenly gets turned upside down when Alfie Risby, heir to a frozen food fortune and her son's tormentor, goes missing during a school field trip. Dylan becomes a major person of interest in the investigation that follows; then Florence discovers Alfie's backpack in Dylan's room. Horror mounting, she reads one of Alfie's notebooks and learns that her son has made threats to kill his classmate. Readers are quickly pulled into the escalating drama by the sharp-tongued Florence, whose observations about the glossy St. Angeles "school mums" and their "anorexic whippet dog[s]," cheating husbands, and endless games of social one-upmanship are as unsparing as they are hilarious. Her commitment to protecting Dylan becomes the catalyst for her evolution into an amateur sleuth who stumbles across secrets so explosive they transform her and her son's lives forever. Sly red herrings and surprise reveals are par for the course in this tightly plotted story that, while it satirizes the British obsessions with appearance and class, also celebrates the power of personal redemption through love. A smart, page-turning suspense novel debut.
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