Artifice
Author: Sharon Cameron
Pages: 416
Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction
Hook:
Isa de Smit was raised in the vibrant, glittering world of her parents' small art gallery in Amsterdam, a hub of beauty, creativity, and expression, until the Nazi occupation wiped the color from her city's palette.
The "degenerate" art of the Gallery de Smit is confiscated, the artists in hiding or deported, her best friend, Truus, fled to join the shadowy Dutch resistance.
And masterpiece by masterpiece, the Nazis are buying and stealing her country’s heritage, feeding the Third Reich's ravenous appetite for culture and art.
So when the unpaid taxes threaten her beloved but empty gallery, Isa decides to make the Nazis pay. She sells them a fake--a Rembrandt copy drawn by her talented father--a sale that sets Isa perilously close to the second-most hated class of people in the city: the collaborators.
Isa sells her beautiful forgery to none other than Hitler himself, and on the way to the auction, discovers that Truus is part of a resistance ring to smuggle Jewish babies out of Amsterdam.
But Truus cannot save more children without money. A lot of money. And Isa thinks she knows how to get it.
One more forgery, a copy of an exquisite Vermeer, and the Nazis will pay for the rescue of the very children they are trying annihilate. To make the sale, though, Isa will need to learn the art of a master forger, before the children can be deported, and before she can be outed as a collaborator.
And she finds an unlikely source to help her - the young Nazi soldier, a blackmailer and thief of Dutch art, who now says he wants to desert the German army.
Yet, worth is not always seen from the surface, and a fake can be difficult to spot. Both in art, and in people.
Rating: 9.9/10
I would strongly recommend this book
Review: I have a confession to make. I bought this book 100% because of its cover. I didn’t even have to read the back or look up reviews. So, I was very pleasantly surprised when the book was great too!! I LOVED this book. The plot was perfection. So many WWII books I’ve read have had such depressing plots, but this one didn’t!! It stayed up-beat enough while, of course, having plenty of action. This was the sort of book that made me laugh, cry, and have to pause while I’m reading just to process how FABULOUS of a book this is. I’ve never read anything else by this author, but the writing was so GREAT that I’m totally going to have to read more by her. I loved Isa and really all of the main character’s different roles in this book. I’m so picky with endings usually, but this one did not disappoint. I was so worried the book would be left without everything wrapping up, but then there was an epilogue!! I love epilogues!! And this one was SO great. So, if you can’t tell, I REALLY liked this book. It was: SUCH A GREAT BOOK!! BEAUTIFUL COVER, FABULOUS PLOT, AMAZING CHARACTERS, AND NEAR-PERFECT WRITING!!
Buy on Amazon:
-
“Sharon Cameron is the #1 NYT best-selling author of seven award-winning novels, including THE LIGHT IN HIDDEN PLACES (2020), BLUEBIRD (2021) and her newest book ARTIFICE, publishing November 7, 2023. Sharon’s books have won the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, the Westchester Fiction Award, the Junior Library Guild’s Gold Standard Award, earned starred reviews from Booklist, SLJ, Book Page and Kirkus, and have been chosen for Indie Next Top Ten, YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, Audible Best Books, and numerous state award nominations. THE LIGHT IN HIDDEN PLACES was a 2020 Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and has been sold in 19 countries.”
-