The Talented Miss Farwell by Emily Gray Tedrowe is about a woman whose obsession with art occurs by happenstance when she walks into a building to use the restroom not knowing it was the art building on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. She wanders around the museum- gallery and is immediately in awe of one of the pieces. The piece which will later be the first in her collection.

Throughout the book, Miss Farwell's character is developed with contradictory traits. She is a thief. She is a philanthropist. She is a buyer of art. She is a collector of art. She is a seller of art. She is caring. She is cold. At times you don't know whether to love her or hate her for what she does to the people in her community who see her as a local hero.

I recommend this title for public libraries.

This is an incredible book. Becky is just brilliant, a character with brains and guts thst we can all love. Such interesting subject matter and content. Will recommend to all!

"The Talented Miss Farwell" was just a so-so book about the double life of quiet, unassuming small-town Illinois city bookkeeper Becky Farwell and her secret life as brilliant, embezzling New York City art dealer Reba Farwell. I kept waiting for something exciting or even mildly interesting to happen with the plot, but the story was more of a cut-and-dry statement of facts than the "electrifying page-turner" it is being billed as.

The Talented Miss Farwell was a novel spanning over 20 years, in which Becky Farwell used her job as an accountant with the city of Pierson, Illinois to steal money from the city to fund her art obsession. She created an alter ego, “Reba”, a sophisticated art dealer that cultivated artists, gallery owners, and other dealers that she met in Chicago and New York City, to form a network to sell and acquire more art.

The story is told in a narrative style, with very little dialog or character development, just a dry monotonous recitation of facts. Even Becky’s embezzlement was told in a tedious description of accounting terms and the details of opening and closing various bank accounts to syphon the funds. The characters, including Becky, felt one dimensional and “sketched in.” Also, there were no descriptions of scenes, which further added to the feeling of being removed from the story. Moreover, in the scant dialog in the book, the author had the irritating habit of having the characters speak in incomplete sentences. In the end, this novel, which had an interesting premise failed to deliver because of the writing style, which seemed to prevent the reader from engaging with the characters.

Any novel that involves art intrigues me. So, I was naturally drawn to give The Talented Miss Farwell a read. The book cover was also a plus.
Miss Farwell lead a double life. In one, she is Becky the treasurer and controller of the small town of Pierson Ill. In her other life she is Reba, a world traveling art collector.
She finances her “activity” of collecting by “borrowing “ from the town’s treasury. For years her obsession with her activity grows as does her borrowing..
I continued to read this novel to find out if Becky would be found out or would she give up her double life..
This novel never quite captured my full interest. The characters were too one dimensional. They were just there on the page with little emotion to draw me in.
If you do like con stories you should give The Talented Miss Farwell a try.
Thank you to the author, Harper Collins and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this e-ARC.

I raced through this clever tale of a woman living two very different lives. It was fascinating to see the transformation into her alter ego and the details of what it took to keep juggling both personas. This book may cause you to take another look at that otherwise mousy colleague. There may be more to them than meets the eye. I may need to be a completist and go read this author's other books. Thank you to Book Club Girls and Netgalley for access to this early copy. All opinions are my own.

This is about a girl who grows up poor and as an adult starts siphoning money from her local government job to start a side career/life of crime as an art dealer. Ostensibly with a plot like that it should have been high tension and high stakes, but it just never was…it was kind of boring. She wasn’t an interesting enough character and it was just so lackluster. It felt like nothing happened. She stole money, bought art, sold it. Rinse, repeat. I wanted it to be more of a Talented Mr. Ripley type drama and sadly it was not.

This is a story that shows the effects of one act of deceit...the thrill leading to more and greater deception. It also allows the reader sideline seats to an impending train crash. You just KNOW this will not end well. Follow Becky on her thrilling journey. You will not be disappointed! Loved it!

Perhaps I put too much into the blurbs comparing this novel to the works of Patricia Highsmith (and the title's toss off to The Talented Mr Ripley), but I did not find it as suspenseful orengaging as I had hoped. Interesting, to be sure, but passages felt like name dropping and the main character and her motives not fully developed.

I could not put this book down! The main character Becky Farwell starts out as a girl who is good at math and learns accounting to save her family business, then she goes on to become a city accountant with a very unusual side hustle. The story of the path her life takes is very polarizing. For some parts of the book I felt very conflicted about whether I liked it and yet I could not stop reading. The story is almost as addicting as Becky's love of art - it draws you in and you never want to leave, and in the end I was not disappointed, it was an entertaining and satisfying read.

The idea and concept of the book were good and that is why I wanted to read it but I did not enjoy reading it. As stated the idea for the story was good and I did want to know what was going to happen but there was no depth to anything. Everything felt like a layout/outline to what the book should of been. There was no character depth or details in the story.

I’ve seen the mixed reviews on this one and it took me a few minutes to really consider my thoughts.

I read most of this book over a weekend. Any book that can keep me to where I make time to read “just one more chapter”, I have to like more than just a little. I could see where Becky was going with her flawed plan but kept hoping there would be a point where she would come to her senses. I did enjoy how the author gave us a glimpse into the mind of a compulsive gambler...just one more hand, just one more time...and then I’ll have enough.

My fave line from the book:
“What was it like to have just your one regular life and to be content? She was almost forty-seven years old and she had so much and it was never enough.”

Pretty profound.

The ending was the bummer for me. I loved Beckys friendship with Ingrid from the beginning and really hoped for a more rewarding closure for those two. To avoid spoilers, I won’t say much other than to say the ending was my least favorite part of the whole book.

So for the ending, this one ends up with a 3.5 for me and not a full 4. Otherwise, an enjoyable read that I could definitely see make it to a screen.

Very intriguing story of a woman leading two separate lives. Becky Farwell has an innate love and appreciation for art. She knows which works speak to her, and learns the art business and how to sell art. Meanwhile, she worked in a small city near Chicago as a bookkeeper. She carefully separates her “day job” from her glamorous life as an art dealer. It’s fascinating, and kept me on tenterhooks, wondering if her two very separate worlds would crash into each other. However, Throughout the whole book, I didn’t feel very connected to Becky. I wish she had been more expressive.

This title already has many long reviews here, some that give away the whole plot, so I won't repeat what has already been said. My favorite part of the story was the beginning chapters when Becky Farwell is a smart, hard working teenager who takes care of her father and runs his business. In a way, this is a feminist tale: a boy in the same situation wouldn't run into the obstacles that kept Miss Farwell feeling lonely and desperate for a little fun and excitement.
I'm picky about endings and this story has a great ending. Miss Farwell is talented and hardworking, so where ever she ends up, she's going to do well.

The Talented Miss Farwell by Emily Gray Tedrowe features a very smart woman who knows how to “work the system.” She is very good at accounting, as she learns early in her life, and figures out how to use her talents to embezzle money. You will probably feel bad for her, at first, as she tries to help save her father’s business, the reader understands how Becky starts this life of crime. Her motives are pure- help her father save his farm equipment business. But everything snowballs until there is no turning back.

It’s a wild ride to follow her journey and watch as she lives what is a double life.

Synopsis:

At the end of the 1990s, with the art market finally recovered from its disastrous collapse, Miss Rebecca Farwell has made a killing at Christie’s in New York City, selling a portion of her extraordinary art collection for a rumored 900 percent profit. Dressed in couture YSL, drinking the finest champagne at trendy Balthazar, Reba, as she’s known, is the picture of a wealthy art collector. To some, the elusive Miss Farwell is a shark with outstanding business acumen. To others, she’s a heartless capitalist whose only interest in art is how much she can make.

But a thousand miles from the Big Apple, in the small town of Pierson, Illinois, Miss Farwell is someone else entirely—a quiet single woman known as Becky who still lives in her family’s farmhouse, wears sensible shoes, and works tirelessly as the town’s treasurer and controller.

No one understands the ins and outs of Pierson’s accounts better than Becky; she’s the last one in the office every night, crunching the numbers. Somehow, her neighbors marvel, she always finds a way to get the struggling town just a little more money. What Pierson doesn’t see—and can never discover—is that much of that money is shifted into a separate account that she controls, “borrowed” funds used to finance her art habit. Though she quietly repays Pierson when she can, the business of art is cutthroat and unpredictable.

But as Reba Farwell’s deals get bigger and bigger, Becky Farwell’s debt to Pierson spirals out of control. How long can the talented Miss Farwell continue to pull off her double life?

What is interesting to me is that this story is based on a real woman:

Inspired by the true story of the woman who pulled off the biggest municipal fraud in US History, embezzling over $50 million in a period spanning more than 20 years.

This comes out in September, you can pre-order here!

How does a small town girl become a glamorous patron in the art world...and major embezzler? Becky Farwell has the good fortune to be gifted at math, which enables her to help keep the family business afloat, and, later, helps her land a job as an accountant for her small town. When she realized that accounting mistakes are overlooked (her attempt to bring them to the attention of her supervisors is essentially slapped down), she begins helping herself to small sums of money. Unfortunately, Becky also discovers a deep appreciation of art, and the desire to own something of merit. Slippery slope, and things snowball, but her embezzling goes unnoticed at work as she rises to become the city's chief financial officer. The author takes us along step-by-step as Becky/Reba lives a double life and makes it all look, well, almost logical. Unfortunately, Becky's focus on her "Activity" precludes most normal relationships...she has one good friend, who was unbelievably naive in her acceptance of gifts and financial assistance over the years. While I initially felt a degree of sympathy for Becky, over the course of the book I found myself mentally shaking my head and just waiting for her to get caught. A quick, enjoyable read. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you so much to net galley for sending me a copy of this book. I didn’t really enjoy it but I think if it sounds interesting to yoh than you would enjoy it!

The art descriptions are the only great thing about this book and I confess I have so little knowledge of the subject that the works described may be all fictional.

DNF this title. I can get behind a cruel & scheming character but I just wasn't feeling this one. Will try to return later to finish because I already purchased it for my library and patrons will ask for my opinion.

Becky Farwell is not a main character to be admired or to be called a heroine, but this is a story of how she started a little something and it just built and built and built until it was out of control. As I got farther into the story, the author created such tension--I was so nervous for her, even knowing how the book ended (I read the endings first), I could not put the book down, waiting to see what would happen to Becky. But yet through all this, the reader can understand why she did what she did and actually I found I pitied her, especially when her friend Ingrid paid a last visit to her. A good read and a good lesson for all readers.