The Botticelli Affair by Traci L. Slatton

Gorgeous, reformed art forger Laila Cambridge misses her father. She’s a grad student in art history and her father disappeared five years ago. She’s blocked writing her dissertation and she’s flat broke. She’s out drinking one night when she meets sexy, mysterious John Bolingbroke, who knows way too much about her. Then he bumps into her as she guides a tour around the Met. He tells her that her father is still alive—but in lethal danger.

Bolingbroke claims to be an art collector. Two weeks ago, he saw Robert Cambridge searching for a legendary lost Botticelli painting. Bolingbroke overheard a plot to pursue Robert, take the painting, and kill him. Bolingbroke knows that Laila has connections in the seedy art underworld; he wants Laila to help him find Robert and the painting. Time is short. The group pursuing Robert has unlimited resources. They have a week at most before the group murders her father.

From New York, through Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome, Laila pursues her father, the painting, and her own redemption... 

Laila Cambridge is a highly skilled art forger. When she is forging pieces, it’s as though the original artist inhabits her body and is painting through her. Deciding to give up that particular skill, she has laid down her paintbrush until a mysterious half-vampire, John Bolingbroke, seeks her out telling her father has been kidnapped and the lost painting of Botticelli is the only thing that can save him.

 

I liked the book and as a painter myself I enjoyed that aspect of it. The concept was intriguing as was the approach take with the vampire. The writing was amazing; I wished more authors would write this way, although I have heard some readers say that you should keep a dictionary handy.  

 

There was incredible chemistry between John and Laila but I don’t feel as though the novel ended with an HEA not even really with a happy for now ending. It just sort of ended on a rather odd note which makes me hope for another book to end it properly.

 

While I loved this book— and literally devoured it in one sitting—, what drove me and my inner art historian mad was the fact the author made a slipup with painting she was referring to.

 

The author decided as a little plot twist, John was the man who posed as Mercury in Botticelli’s Primavera. Brilliant device used! The problem is she mistakenly said that Mercury was in the far right side of the paining when in reality he was in the left. It drove me mad. So throughout the entire book, all I could think about was the fact the author got it wrong.

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