Lush Lives
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
With beguiling wit and undeniable passion, Lush Lives is a deliciously queer
and sexy novel about bold, brilliant women unafraid to take risks and fight for what they love
An unabashedly charged love story set in the evocative and high-stakes world of art and auction in New York City, Roxane Gay Books’ second title is a crowd-pleaser in the vein of Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date and Helen Wan’s The Partner Track.
For Glory Hopkins, inheriting her Aunt Lucille’s Harlem brownstone feels more like a curse than a blessing. As a restless artist struggling to find gallery representation, Glory doesn’t have the money, time, or patience to look after the aging house of an aunt she barely knew. But when she stumbles into Parkie de Groot, a savvy, ambitious auction house appraiser on the verge of a coveted promotion, her unexpected inheritance begins to look more promising. Glory and Parkie form an unlikely alliance and work to unearth the origins of a rare manuscript hidden in the brownstone’s attic. In doing so, they uncover not only the well-kept secrets of Lucille’s life but also the complex relationships between Harlem and its distinguished residents.
Undeniable as their connection may be, complications arise that threaten to tear apart their newly forged relationship. Between Parkie’s struggle to overcome the heartache of past romances and professional problems that threaten to end her rising career, and Glory’s unbridled and all-consuming ambition, they begin to keep secrets from each other. The deeper they dig into the mysteries of the Harlem brownstone, the more fraught their relationship becomes.
Lush Lives is an unforgettable novel of queer love, ambition, and the forgotten histories that define us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lyon (The Groves) blends romance and family history with a scathing critique of the New York City art world in this sumptuous tale. Glory Hopkins, a Black queer painter, moves from Denver to the Harlem brownstone she's inherited from her great-aunt Lucille. In the process of assessing Lucille's belongings, she meets Parkie de Groot, a wealthy white woman who works for an auction house. As Parkie and Glory sift through the house's moldered scrapbooks and artifacts, they begin an affair, their mutual attraction fueled and complicated by the professional possibilities they might provide each other. The stakes are raised after they find an unpublished manuscript that may have been written by Harlem Renaissance novelist Nella Larsen. Glory hopes to succeed as an artist and to get answers about her ancestors and the manuscript, but she has little patience for the cutthroat art scene, which seems to exist purely for the sake of people to be seen rather than to see art. "As far as Glory was concerned," Lyon writes, "Chelsea was a shitshow. More evil than necessary." With prose that turns on a dime from blistering to sensual, Lyon makes Glory an appealing and complex narrator. This is a treat.
Customer Reviews
Don’t bother
Way too predictable!