A beautifully designed book cover enhances the reading process and helps smooth over the little niggles.

The first few chapters were a bit of slog mainly because the MC, Charlotte, was a goose, making glaring mistakes that made me want to shake her. However, I was reminded that she had just lost her mother, moved to a new country and that academia can be very cutthroat. Also that a person can be really book smart and still be a ninny in real life. Once I got over that, the rest of it flew by and while I still wanted to shout at her from time to time, I also wanted to continue reading. 

I enjoy stories where an author takes a historical figure and their story and twist or imagine something that could actually have happened. It makes the story much more believable and the reader more invested as I was. In this case, Lisa Medved, invented a mystery surrounding celebrated 18th century painter Rubens and his engraver, Lucas Voorsterman. She took a few liberties and moved time lines around, but overall, it was a good story. She even threw in a few red herrings that caught me off guard.

Medved made Charlotte's voice much more modern than Antonia's, which was an excellent way of differentiating the characters and time periods.