I really enjoyed this story! It had such a fun connection between the past and the present. The parallel stories of Charlotte Browne with Kate, our heroine, both moving to Rome, was fun to follow the clues and little hints about what was going to happen. This was a fade to black romance, which isn’t really my usual type. In fact, Kate refused to even give in to having a little summer fling, and that was a bit frustrating for me.

However it was the romance of being swept away to Rome, but a man she loved for Charlotte, and a job to forget her ex for Kate. The author did a lot of wonderful descriptions of the settings and places in both Rome, but also every place in the story. Which definitely made sense with this being about artists of all sorts. For me it did make it a bit of a slow start though, and I just learned I was going to skim a bit as I was anxious to get to the story itself.

Jamie was definitely a swoony hero though. He was a wonderful friend for Kate, and even had some great advice for her as an artist, that I remembered is something I need to keep in mind for my own writing. Do it because you enjoy it, don’t necessarily do it because you want to be famous or have it as your career. Those things could happen for some, and that’s great, but if you enjoy it, then do it!

And the way that we ended up getting Charlotte Browne’s story all wrapped up and the puzzle pieces fit in was really what kept me turning pages at the end, having to know if the little clues dropped along the way meant that maybe, just maybe Charlotte got to have a happy life after the tragedy of what society did to her in those days.

Review first posted on Lisa Loves Literature.