A captivating journey to a specialized world full of drama.
An art history student stumbles on a hidden treasure in this literary novel.
Catherine “Cate” Adamson is trying to make her way in New York City’s prestigious art world. The Michigan transplant, who relocated after the tragic death of her teenage brother, Matty, is the only woman in her doctoral program at the fictional New York City University. Her adviser, academic bigwig professor Herant Jones, keeps nixing her dissertation proposals. But everything changes on a cold December day on campus when Cate uncovers a scroll of canvas in a forgotten storage room—and trusts her intuition not to tell Jones. It’s a small but stunning painting that may be from the Baroque period (“The composition seemed to be an allegory, perhaps from mythology”). It strongly resembles the works of renowned 17th-century Spanish Golden Age artist Velázquez, but nothing like it exists on record. Cate decides to embark on a trip to Spain, the center of the Golden Age and now home to the famed Prado Museum, armed with the painting she has nicknamed La Gloria, to try to solve the mystery of the canvas and who created it. Was the artist actually Velázquez himself or a mistress? An enslaved person perhaps? On a train in Spain, Cate meets the handsome Antonio de Olivares, who may have a personal connection to the mysterious painting. Once the Prado gets involved with an agenda of its own, Cate must choose between attaining love and academic stardom and finally giving credit to an artist with no voice. Moore is a Prado alum and former gallery owner. Her passion and extensive knowledge of art history show on every page as readers follow Cate from the tiny, drafty room stateside where the puzzling canvas is found to the vibrant, colorful environment that is Spain at Christmastime. As a love interest, Antonio is attractive, intelligent, and supportive, offering his apartment and ancestral family home to Cate as she needs it as well as the potential for a romantic future. But their conflicts when it comes to the painting and Cate’s professional life are realistic. La Gloria itself, a beautifully described and ever enigmatic artwork, is an intriguing character all on its own.
A captivating journey to a specialized world full of drama.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-253-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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