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WORK TITLE: The French Impressionist
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
yIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: ID
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Children.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Speech language therapist and writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Rebecca Bischoff is a speech pathologist and the author of The French Impressionist, a young-adult (YA) novel featuring fifteen-year-old Rosemary, who poses as an artist to get into an exchange program. However, not only is Rosemary not an artist, she also never plans on returning to America and a life where her mother schedules her every move. Rosemary is sure she can persuade her host family in France to keep her, but to do so she has to tell some small and some very big lies to hide the fact that she has no talent as an artist and has a serious communication disorder.
In an interview for the Amberjack Publishing Website, Bischoff noted how her job as a speech therapist influenced her writing of The French Impressionist. Bischoff noted that she has spent a great deal of time with people who have difficulty communicating. As a result, after hearing some of their stories, she pondered how these people felt because they were often treated differently from a person who could communicate with ease. For example, Bischoff recalled a student who told her about being taken to a special education classroom by another student whom she had asked to show her to her homeroom. The student assumed the special ed class was where she should be. “I couldn’t help wondering how I would feel if I were in a similar situation,” Bischoff noted in the interview for the Amberjack Publishing Website, adding: “Would I wish that others would see me instead of my speech disorder or my wheelchair? Would I wish to have others see me as ‘normal’?”
It turns out that Rosemary has good reason to want to start a new life and get away from a mother who makes sure that she and Rosemary are seldom apart. Rosemary suffers from childhood apraxia of speech, a neurological disorder that distorts her voice and makes her words often come out tangled. It is Rosemary’s disabled friend, Jada, who understands Rosemary’s voice and ends up helping Rosemary with her plan to stay with her host parents. Once Rosemary concocts enough lies to get herself to Nice, she finds that she still has to make up stories about herself and even ends up stealing paintings from a nearby apartment to use as samples of her work, sending one of them off to her mother to show how well she is doing.
“Part of my novel was inspired by a true story about a long-forgotten apartment in Paris, filled with beautiful furniture and artwork,” Bischoff noted in the interview for the Amberjack Publishing Website. Bischoff went on to explain that the Paris apartment had been closed up and uninhabited more than three-quarters of century. When people finally did enter the apartment, one painting stood out, that of a woman in a pink dress. It turned out that the woman in the painting was the owner of the apartment and had left it at the outbreak of World War II, never to return. She also happened to be the lover of the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. The painting was eventually sold for approximately three million dollars.
As the story unfolds in The French Impressionist, Rosemary must finally step forward and tell the truth. She has one especially big lie that she must rectify—namely, owning up to the fact that her mother’s boyfriend, Zander, in reality did not commit a terrible crime. “Dramatic, heartwarming, and full of teenage angst, The French Impressionist perfectly captures the struggle of those who feel they have no voice, and also shows the courage it takes to speak up and show the world who we really are,” wrote Buried under Books Website contributor Lelia Taylor. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called The French Impressionist “a deeply unsettling portrait of love, psychological abuse, and the hell of good intentions.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of The French Impressionist.
ONLINE
Amberjack Publishing Website, https://amberjackpublishing.com/ (November 10, 2016), “Author Q&A: Rebecca Bischoff—The French Impressionist.”
Brenda Drake Website, http://www.brenda-drake.com/ (September 13, 2016), Heather Cashman, “Pitch Wars Team Interview with Rebecca Bischoff and her mentors, Gail Nall and Abby Cooper.”
Buried under Books, https://cncbooksblog.wordpress.com/ (December 1, 2016), Lelia Taylor, review of The French Impressionist.
Hermit Librarian, http://hermitlibrarian.blogspot.com/ (November 20, 2016), review of The French Impressionist.
PR by the Book, http://www.prbythebook.com/ (June 25, 2017), brief author profile.
Teenreads, http://www.teenreads.com/ (December 29, 2016), S. McKenzie, review of The French Impressionist.
YA and Kids! Book Central, http://www.yabookscentral.com (December 6, 2016), Melissa Robles, review of The French Impressionist.
Rebecca Bischoff currently resides in Idaho with her family and works as a speech-language pathologist. She loves helping others, especially kids and teenagers, discover their own unique voices and learn to share who they are with the world. When she isn’t writing, she loves to read, spend time with her kids, and make awkward attempts to learn foreign languages. She is drawn to all things both French and Italian, used bookstores, and anything made out of chocolate.
Pitch Wars Team Interview with Rebecca Bischoff and her mentors, Gail Nall and Abby Cooper
Posted By Heather Cashman on Sep 13, 2016 | 0 comments
PW Interviews
Our mentors are editing, our mentees are revising, and we hope you’re making progress on your own manuscript! While we’re all working toward the Agent Showcase on November 3rd-9th, we hope you’ll take a moment during your writing breaks and get to know our 2016 Pitch Wars Teams.
And now, we have . . .
rebecca-bischoff
Rebecca Bischoff – Mentee
Twitter | Website
Gail Nall
Gail Nall – Mentor
Twitter | Website
Abby Cooper photo
Abby Cooper – Mentor
Twitter | Website
Rebecca: Why did you choose Abby & Gail?
Reading their blogs, I liked their sense of humor as well as some of the favorite books they mentioned. I felt like they would be great to work with and a good team to help me with my manuscript.
Mentors: Why did you choose Rebecca and HOLE IN THE ROCK?
Abby: It made me laugh (a lot!) and the MG voice was totally spot-on.
Gail: The humor for sure, the main character’s voice, and the vivid setting. I’m in love with the setting, which is an actual roadside attraction in the desert.
Rebecca: Summarize your book in three words.
Laughter. Tears. Taxidermy.
Mentors: Summarize Rebecca’s book in three words.
Abby: Unique, hilarious, raccoon
Gail: Bizarre, desert, family.
Rebecca: Tell us about yourself. What makes you and your MS unique?
For starters, I’m a speech pathologist, and in my writing I find that kids with various types of disabilities tend to show up in my books as secondary and sometimes main characters. I guess that’s natural since I’ve worked for eighteen years and counting with kids who have communication disorders. As far as my manuscript goes, I first got the idea for a story involving taxidermy when I saw a coffee table book at a local store entitled “Crappy Taxidermy.” It had hilarious photos of taxidermy projects gone horribly awry, and it got me to thinking about how I could include taxidermy in one of my novels. That coincided with a trip to visit family where we happened to be driving in Southern Utah along highway 191 and came across a place called “Hole N’ the Rock,” and decided to check it out. It had everything: a cave house dug into a huge red rock, tacky souvenirs, taxidermied animals, ice cream cones, weird metal sculptures, and a zoo. It was reality at its most weirdly awesome, and totally something I wanted to put into a book one day. Pretty soon my draft of “Hole in the Rock” was taking shape.
Mentors: Tell us about yourself. Something we might not already know.
Abby: I’m a big animal lover! I can definitely relate to the main character of Rebecca’s book, and I bet a lot of tweens will, too.
Gail: I’m obsessed with road trips, especially those that go to places completely different from where I live. I’m already planning my trip to Moab and Hole N’ the Rock.
Check out this team’s latest releases . . .
Rebecca Bischoff
The French Impressionist
Rosemary is fifteen and gloriously free, on her own for the very first time. Part of an exchange program for aspiring artists, she arrives in sunny southern France with a single goal: she doesn’t plan to leave, ever. She wants a new life, a new family, and a new identity. But her situation, crafted from lies big and small, is precarious.
Desperate to escape haunting images from her past and a stage one helicopter parent, Rosemary struggles to hide her lack of artistic talent and a communication disorder that has tormented her all her life. She believes her dream of a new start will come true, until she unwittingly finds herself enveloped in a decades-old mystery that threatens to ruin her only chance for success. Determined to stay, Rosemary must choose whether or not she’ll tell the biggest lie of all, even if it means destroying the life of someone she cares about.
Dramatic, heartwarming, and full of teenage angst, The French Impressionist perfectly captures the struggle of those who feel they have no voice, and also shows the courage it takes to speak up and show the world who we really are.
“A deeply unsettling portrait of love, psychological abuse, and the hell of good intentions.” – Kirkus Reviews
Posted on November 10th, 2016 by Amberjack Publishing
The French Impressionist
Rosemary is fifteen and gloriously free, on her own for the very first time. Part of an exchange program for aspiring artists, she arrives in southern France with one goal: she doesn’t plan to leave, ever. She wants a new life and a new identity. But her situation, crafted from lies big and small, is precarious. As Rosemary struggles to hide her lack of artistic talent and obvious communication disorder from her new family, she must ultimately choose whether or not she’ll tell the biggest lie of all, even if it means destroying the life of someone she cares about.
“A deeply unsettling portrait of love, psychological abuse, and the hell of good intentions.” –Kirkus Review
To celebrate the upcoming release of Rebecca Bishoff’s debut novel, The French Impressionist, we’ve asked her to tell us about her inspiration and research behind the book, and what she hopes readers will take away from Rosemary’s story.
AJ: How did your job as a speech therapist motivate you to write The French Impressionist?
RB: I’ve spent a lot of time around people who can’t communicate in the easy manner most of us take for granted. I know many individuals who must use a computerized device or an alternate method, such as pictures or sign language to talk to others, and I’ve seen how that influences the way others perceive them. I remember one young woman with a speech disorder telling me about her first day of high school. She asked a student for directions to her home room. That student took her directly to the special education classroom, having made the assumption that this was where she was supposed to be. Another student, who used a wheelchair and a computerized device to communicate, shared how often people stared at her. Daily. I couldn’t help wondering how I would feel if I were in a similar situation. Would I wish that others would see me instead of my speech disorder or my wheelchair? Would I wish to have others see me as “normal”?
AJ: Why diRebecca Bischoffd you choose Nice, France as the setting?
RB: Part of my novel was inspired by a true story about a long-forgotten apartment in Paris, filled with beautiful furniture and artwork. However, I’ve been in love with the Mediterranean coast for many years, having spent a few months living in Genova, Italy. The endless skies and sense of freedom have remained with me since that time. When writing my novel, I decided that it needed to take place in southern France along the coast, not in Paris. Nice has a wonderful history of artists who have lived in the area, as well as that amazing sense of space that can only be felt in a city by the ocean. I wanted Rosemary to fall in love with the palm trees, the sand, and open azure skies, as they represent a freedom she’d never had before.
AJ: Tell us more about this apartment in Paris.
RB: I came across an article about an apartment in Paris that had been left uninhabited for more than 75 years. Once entered, it was found to contain several paintings, including one of a beautiful woman wearing a pink dress. This painting was attributed to the Italian artist, Giovanni Boldini, and was later sold at auction for about three million dollars. The woman in the painting was his lover, a Madame de Florian, who had left her Parisian apartment at the outbreak of World War II and never returned. I was fascinated by the thought of discovering something like that, and the story evolved from there. The idea of finding an apartment left abandoned long ago but still filled with furniture and the mementos of a life left behind was fascinating to me. I used some of the actual photos from the article as a basis for some of the descriptions of the apartment Rosemary enters. Also, the woman who owned the real apartment in Paris, Madame de Florian, did actually possess a collection of letters from various lovers, which she’d kept tied with colored ribbons. I included this detail, although I created the character of Marguerite, the woman whose belongings and forgotten letters intrigue Rosemary.
AJ: Rosemary makes a lot of questionable and naïve decisions throughout the book. What was the most emotional moment for you to write about?
RB: The moment when Rosemary must decide between telling the truth or allowing Zander, her mother’s boyfriend, to be accused of a horrible crime stands out in my mind. Rosemary is so desperate for a new life that she makes many choices that are illogical and potentially hurtful to others. Yet when faced with the knowledge that she could ruin someone else’s life, she tells the truth and faces the consequences, fully knowing that she had everything she wanted within her reach and is now allowing it to slip away.
AJ: What is your favorite quality about Rosemary?
RB: She’s incredibly inventive in the way she constructs a different persona for herself, hoping to hide what she doesn’t want others to see. Though her methods were questionable, Rosemary was resourceful and creative in how she crafted an alternate identity. I also admire her tenacity! She never gives up.
AJ: One of our favorite things about your book is that your protagonist is someone who struggles to be heard and known. Rosemary has her own individual struggles, but her angst and frustrations are relatable to many readers. What do you hope readers will take away most from Rosemary’s story?
RB: I hope that readers will share in Rosemary’s newfound strength as she learns how to believe in herself and to show her true self. I think most of us, like Rosemary, have real or perceived weaknesses, whether physical, emotional, or psychological, that we wish we didn’t have. Rosemary had to accept her speech disorder in order to truly “unmask” herself before everyone else. I think that’s the hardest thing for many of us to do. We all wear invisible masks at various times and for a variety of reasons. It’s very freeing to take the mask off and reveal our true natures.
Rebecca Bischoff: THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST
(Sept. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Rebecca Bischoff THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST Amberjack Publishing (Adult Fiction) 9.99 12, 6 ISBN: 978-1-944995-02-7
Fifteen-year-old American Rosemary, desperate to escape her mother, poses as an art student to find a new family in France. The white teen has never been alone. Her mother schedules every moment so they'll never be apart. Luckily, her friend Jada, who is white and severely disabled, understands her voice, which is distorted by a neurological disorder called childhood apraxia of speech. Jada unwittingly aids her elaborate, rash, perversely sympathetic scheme to stay with a host couple in Nice…and eventually take their absent son's place. After an abrupt misunderstanding thwarts her plan, Rosemary makes a dangerous accusation. Compared to the cloying unease braiding through Rosemary's accounts of her mother and the sickening dread of her unraveling lies, a subplot involving hidden art and one-dimensional villains feels superfluous. The warm portrayal of her host parents intensifies Rosemary's longing to speak out until her narration almost hurts, but the vivid emotions fade in a pat denouement. The reason for her mother's tight leash doesn't justify the years of infantilization and virtual imprisonment. Though done out of love, her mother's overprotectiveness reads as psychological abuse, and the quick resolution of her mother's potentially crippling restrictions implies that good intentions override their effects—a particularly unfortunate implication for a book featuring several characters with disabilities. A deeply unsettling portrait of love, psychological abuse, and the hell of good intentions. (Fiction. 13-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rebecca Bischoff: THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463215983&it=r&asid=bf0af5a23cfa2152b2d0ba96c385c326. Accessed 30 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463215983
Book Review: The French Impressionist by Rebecca Bischoff
December 14, 2016 by Lelia T
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Title: The French Impressionist
Author: Rebecca Bischoff
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Publication Date: December 6, 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
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the-french-impressionistThe French Impressionist
Rebecca Bischoff
Amberjack Publishing, December 2016
ISBN 978-1-944995-02-7
Trade Paperback
From the publisher—
Rosemary is fifteen and gloriously free, on her own for the very first time. Part of an exchange program for aspiring artists, she arrives in sunny southern France with a single goal: she doesn’t plan to leave, ever. She wants a new life, a new family, and a new identity. But her situation, crafted from lies big and small, is precarious.
Desperate to escape haunting images from her past and a stage one helicopter parent, Rosemary struggles to hide her lack of artistic talent and a communication disorder that has tormented her all her life. She believes her dream of a new start will come true, until she unwittingly finds herself enveloped in a decades-old mystery that threatens to ruin her only chance for success. Determined to stay, Rosemary must choose whether or not she’ll tell the biggest lie of all, even if it means destroying the life of someone she cares about.
Dramatic, heartwarming, and full of teenage angst, The French Impressionist perfectly captures the struggle of those who feel they have no voice, and also shows the courage it takes to speak up and show the world who we really are.
It’s an odd thing about this book…I liked it but I kind of didn’t so much but then I’d go back to liking it. I think it’s because, while I’m really sympathetic with Rosemary’s frustrations with her communication difficulties and a smothering parent, I also find her rather annoying, hard to like. I also couldn’t really believe a 15-year-old would be able to pull off a stunt like this and she’s such a messy mix of street smart and childish, having apparently no remorse about all her lies and the inevitable consequences.
Then again, I appreciated the author’s attention to Rosemary’s disability and how it affects her and the people around her. Ms. Bischoff clearly understands what this girl’s world is like and her writing style is fast-paced and appealing, making it easy for the reader to feel what Rosemary feels, to walk a mile in her shoes, as it were.
Ms. Bischoff also has a talent for evoking the best of the setting in Nice, the vivid beauty and the cultural ambience that makes me want to visit. Although I don’t care a whole lot for this young girl, I do think her emotional growth during the story and the reader’s comprehension of how difficult it is to cope with speech disorders make The French Impressionist worth reading.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, December 2016.
The French Impressionist
by Rebecca Bischoff
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“We must find different ways to tell the world who we are.” Rosemary has always had difficulty finding her true voice. When she speaks, her words get tangled. Due to her communication disorder, she wishes to find her voice in the art of painting. There is just one problem. In order to be good at art you must have some artistic talent, which Rosemary does not possess. Through an artist exchange program and many lies, Rosemary finds herself in Nice, France with a new family and a new life style. She hopes to never leave; to live a new life where she is not always being sheltered by overbearing her mother. With help from her host parents and an old mystery in the apartment next door, Rosemary learns how to deal with tough situations and find the beauty in the world around her. Through many lies and deception, she retains the goal of staying in her new world, not caring about the effects they have on her normal life.
"THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST plays strongly into the description of the architecture of France and the other sensory aspects of being in a new area."
Bischoff created a story about a subject that I have never read about. It was interesting and challenging, because I have never dealt with someone with a communication disorder. This book introduced new ideas and showed me that there are many different types of “voices” --- it does not necessarily need to be through words. I really enjoyed the ending of the book. This is because of one of the characters who is introduced later on. He is very knowledgeable and acts as quiet mentor to Rosemary. Rosemary grows as a character and tries to find her voice which leads to many positive changes in her life. The beginning of the book did not catch my attention. I expected more from Rosemary’s character. She was so blinded by the need to get away from her former life that she lied whenever it would help her. I was not able to like her character which made it hard for me to have a connection to her story. However, the author writes in such a descriptive manner that makes it sound like a poem. It was an interesting writing style; it was not overbearing, her words flowed and allowed me to be immersed in the book.
I recommend this book to any young adult readers who are interested in learning about the struggles of having a communication disorder. While it was not one of my favorite books, I now have a better idea of what some of the difficulties and challenges that people with speech-language disorders go through. THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST plays strongly into the description of the architecture of France and the other sensory aspects of being in a new area. This may be interesting for many people who have the aspiration to travel and explore new worlds. Its description and different topic made the book interesting.
Reviewed by McKenzie S., Teen Board Member on December 29, 2016
Featured Review: The French Impressionist (Rebecca Bischoff)
Tuesday, 06 December 2016
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Featured Review: The French Impressionist (Rebecca Bischoff)
About This Book:
Rosemary is fifteen and gloriously free, on her own for the very first time. Part of an exchange program for aspiring artists, she arrives in sunny southern France with a single goal: she doesn’t plan to leave, ever. She wants a new life, a new family, and a new identity. But her situation, crafted from lies big and small, is precarious.
Desperate to escape haunting images from her past and a stage one helicopter parent, Rosemary struggles to hide her lack of artistic talent and a communication disorder that has tormented her all her life. She believes her dream of a new start will come true, until she unwittingly finds herself enveloped in a decades-old mystery that threatens to ruin her only chance for success. Determined to stay, Rosemary must choose whether or not she’ll tell the biggest lie of all, even if it means destroying the life of someone she cares about.
Dramatic, heartwarming, and full of teenage angst, The French Impressionist perfectly captures the struggle of those who feel they have no voice, and also shows the courage it takes to speak up and show the world who we really are.
*Review Contributed by Melissa Robles, Staff Reviewer*
Bright Like Its Cover
I rarely pick up books and start reading them immediately just because of a cover, but this happened with The French Impressionist. It was a "love at first sight" kind of thing that I knew I had to read and I'm glad I did since I ended up enjoying it.
What I Liked:
This is the first time I read a book where the main character has a communication disorder and it was interesting to learn about it along with how the character handles it. Rosemary's struggle is that when she tries to speak, her words come out tangled and not always understandable. She even practices in her head exactly what she's going to say in an effort to get it right, but most often than not, it still doesn't come out the way she wants them to. This impediment is something that weighs heavily on her and what drives her to do the stuff she does in this book, yet I like how it doesn't stop her from having a lively personality, the need to learn and practice a foreign language, or to try out new things.
I also enjoyed The French Impressionist's setting. This book takes place in the beautiful city of Nice, France, where there's a perfect balance of old and modern architecture, a great deal of sunshine, and vibrant shops and markets. It was a true joy to explore this colorful city in Rosemary's shoes, especially Sylvie and Emile's shop and apartment. It was a nice change visiting a different destination in France!
What didn't do it for me:
Most of the characters in The French Impressionist are likeable and/or interesting, but I had a hard time accepting Rosemary's mother and her boyfriend. Mostly because I feel that they deserve another ending and not the "nice" one they get. At least her mother since her attitude is simply unacceptable, despite her reasons.
And, while I did like Rosemary, I can't deny the fact that in some parts she disappoints me too. It's just that her need to keep hold of her freedom makes her say and do stuff that are not okay at all, making it too hard to pass them up for young age. I expected more from her.
Final Verdict:
There are a few things that I disagree about in The French Impressionist, but I still had a great time reading it. The writing is great and the story is quite vivid—great read for a day at the beach!
Good Points
Cover love!
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Review: The French Impressionist by Rebecca Bischoff
The French Impressionist by Rebecca Bischoff
Amazon - Barnes & Noble
Rosemary is fifteen and gloriously free, on her own for the very first time. Part of an exchange program for aspiring artists, she arrives in sunny southern France with a single goal: she doesn’t plan to leave, ever. She wants a new life, a new family, and a new identity. But her situation, crafted from lies big and small, is precarious.
Desperate to escape haunting images from her past and a stage one helicopter parent, Rosemary struggles to hide her lack of artistic talent and a communication disorder that has tormented her all her life. She believes her dream of a new start will come true, until she unwittingly finds herself enveloped in a decades-old mystery that threatens to ruin her only chance for success. Determined to stay, Rosemary must choose whether or not she’ll tell the biggest lie of all, even if it means destroying the life of someone she cares about.
Dramatic, heartwarming, and full of teenage angst, The French Impressionist perfectly captures the struggle of those who feel they have no voice, and also shows the courage it takes to speak up and show the world who we really are.
Rating: 1 Star
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
I don't know why I expected this story to be better than what I found on the page. I thought that the premise sounded interesting. A teenage girl abroad that wants to stay there and not return to her home? That sounds familiar and at the very least relatable. However, the more I read about Rosemary, the less I liked about her and the more I hated about her situation, whether the events of it where of her own making or someone else's.
In the beginning, without really knowing what the dark events alluded to in the summary are and how they might influence Rosemary or her mother or either person's action, I couldn't feel sympathy for Rosemary. While the revelation of these events might have eventually made me feel a modicum of sympathy for her, the time that it took to get there made it impossible to like her.
With each chapter, I heard more about the lies that it took to get Rosemary to Nice, France and into the artist program. What came to mind, aside from the lying to her mother that her mother's boyfriend assisted in, was the plagiarism (is it plagiarism if it's art?) and lying she had to do to get into the program. It is obvious from the get go that Rosemary has no artistic talent and not much artistic interest. How many people did she take opportunities from in order to pursue her own selfish desires? That infuriated me the more I thought about it, but the same thought didn't seem to cross Rosemary's mind.
During the course of the story, there was simply too much time spent on actions of hers that were annoying in the best of terms (average teenage behavior) and aggravating at worst (lying to the tune of traveling out of the country without her mother's permission, lying to multiple people, semi-stalking a couple in an attempt to guilt them into allowing her to stay with them as a new daughter). I just hated Rosemary too much by the end to really care why she was doing these things; the fact that she did them erased any reasonable excuse for it.
I also cannot believe the extent to which the adults in this book believed anything that Rosemary came up with, from her mother's boyfriend helping her get a passport to the host parents Sylvie and Emile. The passport thing, actually, infuriates me because it is simply not possible. Do you know how hard it is to get an American passport for a minor? You must have either both parents present or a signed document saying that the present parent is the sole guardian and there is no other parent to protest removing the child from the country. How would someone totally unrelated to Rosemary have been able to do this? THEY WOULDN'T! It's all in the details and overlooking something so simple to Google annoyed me.
The fact that Rosemary was so childish to even think about lying about Zander "doing something bad to her" and that it wouldn't have any consequences for him made me hate her even more. How stupid could you possibly be? Even if Sylvie and Emile bought that story, of course Zander would find out! They'd contact your mother and either she would tell him or she'd press charges. Something would happen and Rosemary not understanding that just adds another tic to the column of how woefully under prepared she was for this "escape" from her old life.
Rosemary just kept getting worse the more the story went on. She was stealing the paintings from the apartment next door, knowing perfectly well that is what she was doing regardless of her reasoning. She even mailed one off to her mother to pose as one of her own, not realizing that this would come back to bite her. I think it was at this moment that, aside from her multiple criminal actions, was when I couldn't figure out why Rosemary picked art of all things to base her new life around. Why not something she actually knew something about? She had no clue about art or any artists.
Once the events of her past were revealed, I honestly did get to feel sympathetic, but not for her. I started to understand her mother more and though she was still a helicopter parent, her reasons were justified. If your child were lost and kidnapped for four days, wouldn't that send you over the edge, even a little bit? The fact that Rosemary never seemed to understand this, never understood why her mother might have acted in the way that she did, just highlighted her selfishness.
This story wrapped up entirely too neatly and in Rosemary's favor. I don't think there would have been a good way to end this mess, but she ended up getting everything she wanted and suffering no consequences for any of the damage that she had done. I despise it when this happens because it teaches them nothing and is utterly unrealistic.
Now, putting the horrible actions of the main character aside, let me talk for a moment about the pacing of the story. It was, as mentioned previously, too caught up in Rosemary's despicable actions. It dragged on and to be quite frank, I got quite bored with the text. I found myself skimming the majority of the book because the writing was so dull. It did not keep my interest. This might very well have been fixed if the characters weren't so deplorable, but I cannot judge that as this is a debut, so I haven't anything else to compare it to.