by Leslie Jones
First published 2019
Sarah Mitchell stands in the Louvre's marble corridors, clutching her new employee badge. After years of applications and rejections, she has landed her ideal position at a prestigious Parisian gallery. The cramped studio apartment, the language barriers, the loneliness, all of it seems worthwhile now. She pictures herself curating exhibitions, discovering emerging artists, building the career she mapped out in art school. But Paris proves less forgiving than her fantasies suggested. Gallery politics turn vicious. Her mentor becomes her rival. The artist she champions betrays her trust. Financial pressures mount as her savings dwindle. Each day brings fresh obstacles that threaten to destroy not just her job but her sense of who she thought she could become. Sarah must decide whether to abandon the dream that brought her across the ocean or fight for a future that may no longer exist. This is a story about the gap between aspiration and reality, about learning that sometimes the life we want requires sacrificing the person we used to be.
Genres: fiction, art, literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, contemporary-romance
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: France, Louvre, Paris
Period: 21st Century
123 pages · Paperback · Independently published