Hi everyone! Today we’re excited to participate in the bookstagram & creative blog tour for Aix Marks the Spot by Sarah Anderson organized by MTMC Tours! Sent to live with her estranged grandmother in Provence, 16 year old Jamie finds her parents’ old love letters – and clues to a secret treasure hunt that could save her family after the accident that tore them apart , the full synopsis is below. This YA Contemporary Travel Romance releases on June 16th, 2020 from Seabreeze Books!
One of the things I wanted to talk about is how hungry this book made me. The French are known for their delicious food and viewed through Jamie’s novice taste buds, I just wanted to eat EVERYTHING.
I’m talking croissants (of course), brioche glacee which I wanted to taste myself so much, saussisson with a white gravy, barbecue skewers of meat and veggies…oh and a bit of champagne!
SYNOPSIS
Jamie has been dreaming of this summer forever: of road trips and intensive art camps, of meeting cute boys with her best friend Jazz. What she didn’t count on was the car accident.
Exiled away from her family as her mother slowly learns to walk again, Jamie is sent to Provence and trapped in an isolated home with the French grandmother she has never met, the guilt of having almost killed her parents, and no Wi-Fi. Enough to drive a girl mad. That is, until, she finds an old letter from her father, the starting point in a treasure hunt that spans across cities and time itself. Somehow, she knows that the treasure is the key to putting her shattered family back together and that whatever lies at the end has the power to fix everything.
Armed only with a high-school-level of French and a map of train lines, she must enlist the aid of Valentin, a handsome local who’s willing to translate. To save her family, she has castle ruins to find and sea cliffs to climb; falling for her translator wasn’t part of her plan…
Title : Aix Marks The Spot
Author : S.E. Anderson
Format : eARC
Page Count : 380
Genre : Contemporary YA
Publisher : Seabreeze Books
Release Date : June 16, 2020
Reviewer : Micky
Rating : ★ ★ ★ ★
Micky’s 4 star review
This was an engaging coming-of-age story of an American-French teen, Jamie. Set in Provence, it gave me Love & Gelato vibes but it floated my boat so much more than that book did. That said, I do think fans of that series would be drawn to this story.
Jamie arrived in Provence on a rush, sent by her parents to stay with her rather eccentric Grand Mere she had never met. It became immediately apparent that there was a language barrier and one of the things I liked about this book was picking through the french and translated dialogue peppered throughout. I liked guessing and testing my school French but I was always left understanding what was being said. Jamie was left to her own devices and had to explore the local village where Valentine took pity on her. What ensued was a crazy adventure, a treasure map set by one of her parents nearly twenty years ago and a colourful few weeks of fun.
A cute, nerdy French boy wanted to show me around a castle and knew exactly what cheeses I was going to like. Talk about a fairy tale…
Except this really wasn’t a fairy tale, underpinning this whole story was a terribly dysfunctional family, long in the making, that needed to communicate. Grand mere was frankly a little scary, intimidating and giving mixed (French) messages all over. The situation back home was complex and Jamie was stuck in a rut with regards to her thinking about it all.
They say the opposite of love is hate, but it really isn’t, it’s indifference.
AIX MARKS THE SPOT was a fun read, a cute read even but it had serious tones with a solid plot line and great character development. It’s the kind of book to be demolished in a day or weekend with truly summer vibes which I really appreciated on a hot day locked-down in my garden. Rounded up to 4 stars.
Thank you to MTMC Tours and the author for the early review copy. You can hop over to Micky’s bookstagram for a better look at the book .
All the buy links are here:
Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Book Depository | B&N
About Sarah Anderson:
S.E. Anderson can’t ever tell you where she’s from. Not because she doesn’t want to, but because it inevitably leads to a confusing conversation where she goes over where she was born (England) where she grew up (France) and where her family is from (USA) and it tends to make things very complicated.
She’s lived pretty much her entire life in the South of France, except for a brief stint where she moved to Washington DC, or the eighty years she spent as a queen of Narnia before coming back home five minutes after she had left. Currently, she is working on her PhD in Astrophysics and Planetary sciences in Besançon, France.
When she’s not writing, or trying to science, she’s either reading, designing, crafting, or attempting to speak with various woodland creatures in an attempt to get them to do household chores for her. She could also be gaming, or pretending she’s not watching anything on Netflix.
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A Take from Two Cities 