Reviewer: Lori Graham
Title: The Givenchy Code
Author: Julie Kenner
Publisher: Pocket Books
ISBN: 0-7434-9613-2
Release Date: May 2005
Genre/Sub-genre: Romantic Suspense
Year/Setting: Current/New York
Overall rating: 4.75
Sexual content rating: Sensual/Sexual
Julie's Website:
www.juliekenner.com
Melanie Prescott is a woman born to shop. Depressed? Shop. Happy? Shop. Sad? Shop. Excited? Shop. You get the picture. She has lost her main job so she does odd jobs for a living as she works on her master’s degree in history (her undergraduate degree is in math).
Several years ago, she had played a game when she was surfing the Internet but found that it didn’t hold her interest for very long because it just didn’t seem very realistic. It becomes all too real and comes back to haunt her.
After a night with her ex boyfriend, which she regretted happening especially, since she found him dead in the morning, she was surprised to find a man in her apartment. Matthew Stryker has found he is another player in this resurrected game. Where the game used to be on the computer only, now someone has taken it to real life and the streets of Manhattan.
The game has three player positions – target, protector and assassin. Melanie has been defined as the target with Matthew as the protector because of his military counterterrorism background. The assassin isn’t known to them. To play the game, you are given a clue and you have to solve the clue to move on to the next clue until the finale. As Melanie’s love is obscure codes and clues (cryptography) she enjoys that portion of the game. If only, her life didn’t depend on her being right.
The Givenchy Code is truly a book for mystery lovers. There is romance in the story as Melanie and Matthew are drawn together during their struggles. They find themselves reaching out to each other when they are scared and feeling vulnerable – a very human way to react. However, the mystery in this story is dramatic and intriguing. The codes and riddles, which make up the clues to the game are ingenious and thought provoking. I enjoyed the characters and how they interact with each other. Julie found the gifts each character was blessed with and let them showcase those gifts. This method kept the characters very life like and believable.
The way the codes and riddles were introduced also made the reader get involved in the book. This isn’t the type of book you can just sit back and skim. It requires you to engage and think things through with the heroine. Well done!
Lori
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