half blown rose a novel leesa cross smith

When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. Cross-Smith sensitively explores the many permutations of romantic and platonic love and the idea that, especially in Paris, one’s love may not be limited to a single other person.Ĭharming and lively, if somewhat predictable.Īfter being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father. Vincent is a lovable protagonist the narrative is also interspersed with her diary entries and letters, creating a self-aware, three-dimensional character. Though its plot sometimes proves predictable-the love triangle at the book’s center is its almost-exclusive focus, and it presents few unexpected turns (or character developments, at least on the men’s parts)-this is a smoothly written, enjoyable novel that gives due to the social and emotional complexities of middle age. But as Vincent's son’s wedding approaches, ensuring a reunion between her and Cillian, she’s compelled to reevaluate the person she’s become during her marriage and must decide whether her time in Paris will prove life-altering or nothing but a brief, beautiful mirage.

Vincent and Loup finally initiate an affair whose intensity is entirely befitting of Paris: wandering through the city aimlessly at night meeting at Loup’s band’s smoky, busy shows and discovering one another physically. Meanwhile, she tries to process frequent apology letters from Cillian, who’s seeking reconciliation, and strikes up a surprisingly heartfelt correspondence with her husband's estranged son.

Loup is instantly enamored with Vincent, and as he’s woven into her social circle, the attraction between them grows stronger and harder for Vincent to resist. The pleasant rhythm of Vincent’s routine is interrupted, though, when a friend introduces her to the energetic, violently attractive Loup-a 24-year-old who, like his wolfish namesake, symbolizes a force equally captivating and dangerous.

In Paris, she can be “simply Vincent, not Vincent the wife or Vincent the mom or Vincent the daughter or Vincent the sister.” Vincent stays in her artist parents’ lush apartment hosts dinners attended by a cast of cultured acquaintances and teaches a class on journaling. When Vincent Wilde’s husband, Cillian, a renowned author, publishes a novel that tells the thinly veiled story of their relationship-and reveals the existence of an illegitimate child he fathered at age 15-she finds solace in temporarily relocating to Paris, home of her namesake, Van Gogh. A woman flees her recently torn-apart marriage to Paris, where she reevaluates her life.

Half blown rose a novel leesa cross smith