The Art of Love and Lies
Grade : B

The Art of Love And Lies is a genteel, well-researched novel about art forgery and true love, and all of it’s based around a real-life incident of art fraud. The end result is lovely romance, but some research issues kept it from getting a higher grade.

Rosanna Hawkins has a unique job – she painstakingly reproduces famous works of art as parlor replicas which hang in the homes of the average citizen. Her boss does not respect her, though she is the daughter of a gentleman, and does not treat her art as anything but fungible. As part of her job and at the insistence of her boss, Anton Greystone, Rosanna attends a large art showing in Manchester, trying to scout Michelangelo’s The Manchester Madonna, which she plans to replicate next. Romance unexpectedly arrives in the form of the exhibit’s head of security, Inspector Martin Harrison.

But criminality may threaten to ruin their romance; someone is stealing art from the exhibition and planting evidence there that implicates Rosanna. Determined to clear her name, Rosanna and Harrison team up to find out who the real culprit is before a priceless masterpiece is stolen forever.

The Art of Love and Lies knows its art forgery history, and does a good job when it steers into a version of the genuine heist which occurred at the very art expo Rosanna attends. But some historical wobbles popped out as quite noticeable to me.

To wit: Rosanna and her sisters are the daughter of a gentleman and are Landed Gentry. And yet their father encourages them to work instead of marrying and has no problem with Rosanna living in a boarding house.

Rosanna is a smart if slightly snobbish heroine, and I liked Harrison just fine. Their romance is very sweet and well-handled, although th mystery is initially not really mysterious, and leans heavily on their missing obvious context clues. There is an eventual plot twist, though, that makes up for this.

I do, however, have to protest that while it’s perfectly possible for Rosanna to be skilled enough to make several copies of famous paintings in quick succession, the paint on her canvas wouldn’t instantaneously dry, especially without proper curing or glazing.

And yet The Art of Love and Lies is a perfectly nice book that’s good enough for an evening’s diversion.

Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes
Grade : B

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date : September 15, 2023

Publication Date: 08/2023

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Lisa Fernandes

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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