A Faithful Likeness by Clementine Hart
The Thorough Route #2Tropes: slowburn, firstperson, forbiddenlove
Limited-time access — 7 days left to join the ARC team
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A Faithful Likeness by Clementine Hart
The Thorough Route #2Tropes: slowburn, firstperson, forbiddenlove
Limited-time access — 7 days left to join the ARC team
About This Romance ARC
Iris never stays. She has a rule about it.
A flawless record of walking away clean, £420 of studio rent due, and a commission she can't afford to refuse: paint the wife of a decent Notting Hill architect for the couple's tenth anniversary.
Margot has spent twenty years being the sensible one. A&E nurse, the kind who keeps her composure through an arterial bleed. The woman who holds everyone else upright and has never once done a thing just because she wanted it.
Then she sits for a portrait in a freezing East London studio, and the painter looks at her the way nobody has bothered to look in years.
It should be simple. Hold the pose, paint the picture, hang it in Notting Hill by summer. But the sittings keep running long. The studio keeps getting warmer. Iris — a woman who does not so much as own a second mug — catches herself hoping she'll stay.
And Margot keeps coming back, wanting, for the first time in her life, something she is not allowed to have.
A warm, funny, achingly romantic story about the person you meant to be and the person you turn out to be.
Trigger Warnings
cheating/infidelity, sexual content (open door), grief and bereavement, parental death (in the past, referenced rather than depicted), divorce and the end of a marriage, hospital and medical detail, an accident with injury
What You'll Do as an ARC Reader
ARC Reviews
I really liked Elsie! She was relatable and funny. The character growth was great. I loved that they were such good friends with some fun banter back and forth, they just know each other, which makes it fun. Margot was also a great character. They both make the book a great read.
Spoiler content – click to reveal
Margot, aware of her age as if it's the specter of a life not lived looming over her.
Iris, prescient, acute, perceptive beyond Margot's carefully tended and manicured facade. She see the person Margot barely admits even to herself, let alone those closest to her.
Sharp wit, snark, friendly sparring jabs designed to lay bare the situation, but not to harm. Humor in the subtle, very British way that doesn't call attention to itself.
The fascination of watching two cubes of ice melting, softening in one another's presence (in spite of cold studio) as familiarity and comfort grows to a shared desire.
With their inner monologs laid in plain view we watch them twist and wrangle their growing feelings into something they can accept, or at least pretend they have control of, till the attraction is inescapable, like a paperclip approached by a magnet.
Then, even knowing it has to come, we're still jolted when Margot makes not one decision, but two, and the story takes a different turn leaving chaos hidden and visible in its wake. The cold stoicism here cuts like frost in the lungs - sharp, jagged, but real. Their leaning on friends and family felt very authentic, intimate; Iris coming apart under Elsie's scrutiny, Theo picking up Margot's pieces off the floor.
I really enjoyed this story in its subtle building of stakes between Margot and Iris, the tension Simon brings to their tentative budding relationship, and the comedy of Elsie and Theo from the sidelines. I did find the "beat too long" a little over-used, but that aside the inner monologuing was very intimate and dropped me right in their thoughts.
I received an advance review copy for free through PenPinery and am leaving this review voluntarily and I want to read the rest in the series now! Definitely recommend for lovers of slow burn, meaningful relationships!
