Title: The Artist
Author: Bonnie Dee
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 153 Pages
Category: Historical Romance
At a Glance: A bit Beauty and the Beast with a hint of The Ugly Duckling, The Artist is a sweet and romantic tale that proves beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Creating love from darkness is the greatest art…
Living a bohemian lifestyle in Paris is wonderful for Teddy Dandridge, but disastrous for his finances. His unconventional artistic creations find few buyers. After a year of failure, he returns to England to fulfill a portrait commission for a wealthy family, but he finds a different, source of inspiration secreted away in their sprawling house.
Isolated and rejected by his family, Phineas Abernathy haunts the west wing like a ghost. A physical deformity has locked him away from society for all his life. Filling his days with reading and drawing, he dreams of a life that seems unachievable…until irreverent, opinionated Teddy explodes into his quiet world.
Intrigued by the kind and creative man beneath the ungainly exterior, Teddy gives Phin nightly drawing lessons. A private friendship is born as the men share life stories, future hopes and a growing attraction. Phin agrees to pose for a portrait in which Teddy tries to illustrate the depth and beauty he sees in him. He also guides the eager virgin in the ways of love between men.
When persecutors from Phin’s past arrive at the house, the slights and hurts he has suffered his entire life boil over. He must at last be brave enough to emerge from his cocoon and venture into an often cruel and judgmental world. And Teddy must risk Society’s censure to embrace his protégé’s love.
Review: Author Bonnie Dee has written yet another winning historical romance in her latest release, The Artist, a lovely story with just the slightest hint of the bittersweet and an essence of Beauty and the Beast about it.
Set in 1902, the artist in question, Teddy Dandridge, has just returned from Paris where he’d hope to gain a name for himself in the art world. Teddy’s time rubbing elbows with a Bohemian crowd, including the artist Toulouse-Lautrec, left him with a less biased view of the world but also more penniless than famous. Thanks to his uncle, Teddy has earned a commission back in England to paint the portrait of debutante Rose Abernathy, which he hopes will earn him future commissions among the aristocratic set. Teddy is talented and has a keen eye for the beauty that exists not only on the surface but that exists within the abstract as well. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder isn’t a simple idiom to Teddy; it’s the optics through which he creates and the lens through which he views the Abernathys family secret—Phinneas.
It is Phinneas’ misfortune that he wasn’t born beautiful, and his family treats him appallingly for it. A disfigured left arm and a face that is imperfect in symmetry, with a prominent brow and weak chin, has prompted his parents to lock Phin away in the west wing of the family estate, isolated and alone but for a servant who has become an overprotective father figure to him. Phin’s appearance has been mistaken for a lack of intelligence as well, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Twenty-one years of isolation has given Phin plenty of time to read and learn. He’s erudite and in spite of the abysmal treatment at the hands of his own family, he is charming and kind and gentle, with a curious mind inhabiting a body that’s been forbidden to travel beyond his rooms and the garden outside his door.
Teddy determines that he will somehow make his way to Phin’s rooms to meet this reclusive middle son, and what happens after is nothing short of heartbreaking, hopeful, and romantic. Phin’s innocence is portrayed not as a weakness for Teddy to exploit—although Phin does have his share of tormenters—nor is he a blank canvas. Phinneas is more a work in progress, and it takes Teddy’s open mind and an eye for finding hidden beauty to expose Phin to the dream of a life beyond his borders. The subsequent longing and fear this inspires gives the novel much of its emotional depth, and watching Phin and Teddy become more enamored of each other and, eventually, more emotionally entwined, is lovely.
I loved Phin’s transformation in this book. It may not follow the ugly duckling trope in the strictest sense, but he does go through such an empowering change, and the confidence he gains from discovering his own inner strength is beautiful. The happy beginning for Phin and Teddy is reached in a sweet and believable way, which is one of the things that always attracts me to Bonnie Dee’s writing.
You can buy The Artist here:
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