Review by Nathalie Hardy

Published in Portland Woman, Fall 2011

What makes a book by a Portland author a bestseller within a week of publication? Is it the complicated characters who make mistakes but aren't defined by them? Is it the twisting, thrilling plotline that keeps you turning pages long after you swore you'd stop?

Audrey Braun's debut novel has both. A Small Fortune, a hybrid mystery-romance could be classified as a beach read in that it is wildly entertaining, breath-taking in both plot and depth. But if you have kids to watch or somewhere to be before the tide comes in, it just wouldn't be safe. It's really that engaging. 

Braun's main character, Celia Donnelly, is no super-hero. She's an over-worked, stressed out book editor with a gnawing sense that something is wrong. Busy and frustrated by the morphing of her sweet son, Ollie into a sullen Oliver, she is hoping to relax and reconnect with her family on vacation. Instead, she lands herself in a dangerous, intercontinental mystery while learning her family was never what it seemed. 

It's when she gets truly lost that she finds her internal compass and realizes that trusting her intuition and taking responsibility for her happiness is the way to safety -- and to freedom.