The Brevity of Roses
Linda Cassidy Lewis
Two-Four-Six Publishing
Copyright © April 2011
ISBN: 978-0983336501
362 Pages
$2.99 Kindle
$13.55 paperback
I selected The Brevity of Roses to review based on the Amazon preview. It intrigued me because it was well written and made me wonder what happened next. I wasn’t disappointed once I read the whole book, it remained well written and hard to put down.
One thing I like about independently published books is that they often defy rigidly defined genres. While I would never go out of my way to read a genre romance, I enjoy love stories. In The Brevity of Roses, Lewis gives us not one love story, but two.
Jalal is a man at war with himself when we first meet him. A strung-out womanizer who is over the go-go lifestyle of a Wall Street broker, Jalal moves back to the west coast to be closer to (but not close to), his family. A man who has always had a proclivity for older women, he meets Meredith who is many years his senior. Their love burns bright and hot, but we don’t get to see much of it when her life is cut tragically short. Now Jalal must piece himself back together… enter love story number two.
I liked some of the quirky touches to this book. Jalal and his family are Persians who emigrated from Iran when he was young. The Persian family is close, but Jalal has always had conflict with his father due to sibling rivalry and a misunderstanding. They give a colorful counterpoint to the brooding and emotion of the love story. In fact, the theme of ‘daddy issues’ is a recurring one among all of the main characters in this book. All of them have strained relationships with their fathers, although it is left up to us as readers to determine if this is part of the attraction they feel for each other.
I’ve told you what I liked about the book, now I have to tell you my only gripe. The characters in The Brevity of Roses aren’t very relatable. Jalal is an independently wealthy poet. Meredith is an independently wealthy heiress. They spend a lot of time traveling, drinking wine, and dining out when they aren’t circling each other warily or falling into bed together. I guess that’s the fantasy this type of book is supposed to represent, allowing the reader to be someone with nothing to worry about but finding love. To me though, it had the opposite effect and threw me out of the story a bit.
If you like books without a single serial killer, police detective, hot shot lawyer, or vampire to be found but lots of romance and (sometimes messy) inter-personal relationships then The Brevity of Roses should definitely be on your reading list. Linda Cassidy Lewis is a virtuoso with the English language and this book is a joy to read.