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"Taut and wrenching... A sense of foreboding rises as characters attempt to steer through their complicated routes, misgivings, and internalizations."—Leah Strauss, Booklist
"If you're looking for a summer thriller, be sure to pick up a copy of The Loyalties."—Grace Dearing, City Beat
"Packs a hefty emotional punch. It reminded me of Leila Slimani's terrific The Perfect Nanny."—Bookseller
"Narrated with punch and pace. You're kept reading helplessly to the desperate cliff-hanger finish."—Daily Mail
"The latest literary sensation."—Daily Telegraph
"Delphine de Vigan coils these stories together in a taut, intense novel of secrets, lies, and the unknowable depths of others."—Tatler
"One of the finest writers of psychological fiction in France today."—France Magazine
"It's a deceptively simple novel---an impression enhanced by the unfussy prose, shorn of literary flourish or artifice---but a powerful, thought-provoking one."—Country and Town House
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The Loyalties is a novel that centers around the lives of two 12-year-old French schoolmates, Théo and Mathis, and explores the challenges and quandaries of adults dealing with at-risk youth. We didn’t want to depict the children themselves as we were wary of the cover looking exploitative, but I did want to show something innocent and beautiful becoming ruined just as these young boys’ lives are being ruined of their potential. At the same time it needed to look suspenseful because a big question in the novel is whether they can be rescued in time before terrible damage is done. I found the image of the rusted nails first and thought this represented the boys’ home environments—but to show their innocence, I needed to combine it with a contrasting object and I imagined the children as flowers trying to grow through an environment of decay. Interweaving the two images gave the cover the balance it needed to convey the danger and sadness that surrounds these boys’ lives.
—Lucy Kim, Art Director
