04 Sep / Good Eggs by Rebecca Hardiman [in Booklist]
An octogenarian shoplifter doesn’t quite seem like a likely hero, but British actor Siobhan Waring will certainly make you believe otherwise. Kleptomaniacal Irish matriarch Millie is caught yet again at the village shop and this time her son Kevin (energetically embodied by Irish-born Gary Furlong) refuses to be lenient after he’s had to pick her up at the police station. At 53, this isn’t the life he imagined. He’s unemployed with an impatient wife and four demanding kids including rebel daughter Aideen (Irish actor Alana Kerr Collins relishing the delightfully teenage-angsty opportunity), who is about to be shipped to boarding school.
Kevin’s bandwidth exhausted, he hires American caretaker Sylvia, who seems too good to be true. And, of course, she is. The growing dysfunction only gets more complicated when Aideen develops her first crush … coincidentally, on Sylvia’s son.
The thieving is hardly over, shenanigans continue, and truths are uncovered in a Florida gated community. Hang on: Hardiman’s exuberant debut’s a fabulously wild ride.
Review: “Media,” Booklist, August 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2021