‘Three miles away at Scheveningen the grey beach was bleak, unvisited, the daylight fading. It was getting colder. Why linger? There was nothing out there but the cold North Sea stroking the land. In the town there would be bustle, conversation, connections, chances to not be alone.’
Stefan owns a moderately successful art gallery in The Hague, passing his days in a comfortable but spiritless rut.
Freelance journalist Anna has quit her corporate job in search of something more fulfilling.
Art school student Nikki works part-time at Stefan’s gallery and hopes for a breakthrough exhibition; her student friends Petra and Suzanna have the same hope but things are not going their way.
Established local artist Matthijs reaches a turning point in his fifties.
Second chances come and go, but will they be taken?
David Kintore’s beguiling debut novel brings together a cast of characters navigating their way through the art world – breaking in, struggling, thriving, drifting.
I thought this book was a good read, it made me feel very relaxed as I was reading it which was a nice feeling. I think it’s because of the descriptions within it, the art was described beautifully as were the places that book was set in as well as those places that were visited in the book.
I thought that the characters were great, they were really well thought out and I must admit I was a little sad at the end as I felt like I was really going to miss them. Our main character that we meet first is Stefan who owns the art gallery, he is a quiet man who enjoys art (obviously), long walks and good craft beers. He’s really likeable but there does feel something sad about him at the beginning.
We then have Anna, our journalist who again is a really likeable character, she works hard and you could just tell that there was that spark with her and Steffan. I think it’s was nice how they were quite similar with previous relationships aswell as the things they enjoyed doing and u really liked watching their relationship blossom.
Nikki was one of the art students and it was so good to feel that I was sharing her journey with her, she was definitely very brave at times and had some pretty big decisions to make quite quickly at times. The rest of the characters were also great and each had their own unique things about them which made for very interesting reading.
Whilst I did like the writing style, I do think splitting the book into more clearly defined chapters would be better as sometimes it almost felt like I was jumping from one thing to another and it took me a few moments to realise. Despite that I still did really enjoy the book and would be interested in reading more from David.
You can grab a copy here #Aff (If you buy a copy through this link I get a teeny commission of the sale from Amazon)
Huge Thanks to Love Books Tours and David Kintore for my place on the blog tour.
Yorumlar