I found the jumping between movie script, excerpts from Cillian’s book, and Vincent’s accounts very confusing and other than Vincent’s intense infatuation with Loop there wasn’t much to the story.

This book is an intimate portrait of a woman whose marriage is at a crossroads when a secret her husband has hid for over 20 years comes out. Taking some time Vincent decides to go to Paris for a year to work on her business and to teach while deciding what is next for her and her life. While there, Vincent, starts making friends and then meets Loup, a man 20 years her junior, and they start something Vincent is not sure she wants to end.

At the core, this book is all literary fiction. There is not a lot of plot, but a narrative of a woman taking back her life and figuring out what will make her happy.

This is the third book I have read from Leesa Cross-Smith and I am 100% in for any book she writes in the future. Her writing is simple, engaging and unforgettable. This is a slow burn of a book, but oh so satisfying.

Thank you NetGalley, Grand Central Publishing and Hachette Audio for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I went all-in hoping to fall in love with Half-blown Rose. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy it as much. This was a slow-moving love story with one at the forefront and the other in the background. The story surrounding the main character past was more interesting. As for the setting of the story, it took place in Paris and the majority of the time the author uses a lot of French words and phrases and automatically assumes the reader understands. Even the passages written in English didn’t convey or clarify any of the French meaning. As for the main characters, I wouldn’t to know more about them as far as image and personality go. I didn’t fall in love with the characters because so much was shrouded in the setting of the story. I wanted to know more about what Vincent and Loup to where I cared about them. I did not feel something for these characters. The level of romance was meh as well. There wasn't a build-up to where you wanted these characters to connect. The author often told what happened rather than showed what happened. Overall, I give Half-blown rose two stars because it didn’t grab my attention. There was little chemistry between the main characters, often too many characters to where the story became confusing, and not enough explanation.

I really really liked the author's last book, This close to okay, but unfortunately I found this newest novel way too slow-moving to keep my interest! Told from the perspective of Vincent, a mid-40s woman grappling with secrets that were revealed in her husband's latest book. Not sure if she can forgive him for not telling her about a child he fathered as a teen before leaving Ireland, Vincent is taking time away in Paris to regroup. While there she gets embroiled in an affair with a much younger French man, Loup, and has to decide if she wants to reconcile with her husband or see what might happen with Loup. Very character driven, this book might appeal to fans of The idea of you or The perfect find. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is another DNF for me. Read 25% and just cannot care about this rich woman's mid-life crisis. The circumstances that triggered the crisis are awful, but all this story seems to care about is her crush on a younger man and how well our lead can avoid her problems. It's self-indulgent and boring. If you are interested in the descriptions down to the most finite detail, almost play-by-play, thought-by-thought like a screenplay, this is for you. I can't read anymore of it.

**Thank you NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the eARC**

To be completely honest, this book was a struggle for me. I found it to be predictable, the characters to be boring and they storyline flat. Cross-smith does a great job of transporting you to Paris. Her writing is incredibly descriptive and her characters are realistic, but the plot of this book just didn’t do it for me. I felt that very little happened in the book. I was annoyed throughout the book - maybe I am not the right audience? (30something mother of 3…)

44 year old Vincent, a mother or 2 adult children, escapes to Paris. She is trying to process her husbands betrayal, which she learns about in his newest bestseller. While in Paris, Vincent finds herself in a relationship with a 24 year old. All the while her husband is trying to win her back. Will she be able to forgive him and move forward?

I did not like Vincent’s character. I found her whiny, flat and unlikeable. Typically this is not a reason for me to dislike a book, but since the book is written in her perspective, It definitely made reading it harder. I struggled to understand her perspective and decisions at times.

Thank you netgalley for my advanced reader copy.

This was very unique and a love letter to Paris in many ways even as it detailed a marriage falling apart and a new relationship sprouting through the cracks. There was some scene setting in the form of a screenplay as well as texts and emails interspersed with the narrative. I liked it immensely even though the motivations of the characters weren't how I would have reacted. Definitely would recommend this, especially if you are thinking of making a major change. It was cathartic in that way!

Half-Blown Rose comes out next week on May 31, 2022, and you can purchase HERE!

You're going to destroy me and I will allow it.

44-year-old Vincent Wilde has run off to Paris after her husband’s betrayal is broadcast publicly. Cillian had fathered a baby at 15 in Ireland, but his embarrassed parents had moved him to America to get away. He decided to admit this in an auto fiction novel he writes that quickly becomes a hit. Now in Paris Vincent decides to live on her own terms and become immersed in the Parisian culture despite her estranged husband’s request for them to reconcile. Soon she finds herself drawn to 24-year-old Loup in an intense affair which introduces new complications. What will Vincent decide?

I felt so many unique emotions reading this novel. I felt like I was falling in love in Paris and the romance and mess of it all. I loved how open and nonjudgmental Vincent’s family and Parisian friends were. It showcases that we are multifaceted and not everything can be so black and white. You could really feel the love they all had for each other. I supported Vincent getting away from her husband and putting her needs first. I didn’t even mind her relationship with Loup. I was rooting for them, but I wanted so badly for her to go to therapy!! Her constant second guessing was exhausting, and it felt like she was stringing both Loup and Cillian along instead of being upfront and honest. The ending felt like it was left on a cliff hanger. I wanted to know how things would evolve when she made her many choices and the reaction to them. Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley for the EARC in exchange for an honest review.

First let me say that Leesa, we need an epilogue! I have feelings about that ending.

Plot summary, Vincent is a 44 year old woman recently betrayed by her famous author husband, Cillian who had recently wrote an “auto fiction” about having a secret love child before marrying her.

Vincent is understandably hurt, the love of her life has held these secrets their entire relationship, and didn’t bother to be honest with her until the book was published. She makes a decision to remake her own life and travels to Paris, living in a home owned by her parents, and becoming an art teacher at a local campus. There, she is consumed by everything Parisian and is completely immersed in the new life she’s created, despite her estranged husband’s frequent requests for forgiveness… which she declines.

Then she meets Loup, a young “looks like Timothée Chalamet” student who is smitten with Vincent. And before long, a intoxicating love affair begins.

This book is structured from Vincent’s POV, with chapters from her husband’s book “Half-Blown Rose”, and what seems like screenplay narrations. I didn’t quite grasp the need for the narrations until the ending (I still want that epilogue though!) There are also email communications between Vincent and someone (I won’t spoil it)… and lastly there are several of Vincent’s current playlists sprinkled throughout the book.

I couldn’t really tell where my reading experience was headed, the book is quite unique in its structure, written like a diary at times, but quickly I sunk deeper into some very compelling plot points… will Vincent continue to live in Paris? Will she ever go back to America and forgive Cillian, who she still can’t help but love deeply? How will she ever have a life without Loup, who so kind and full of life and loves her like she’s never experienced?

While Vincent “discovers” herself, the use of French language, and the Paris setting is absolutely a book in itself. I personally love all things French, but the way the author writes about this experience is absolutely mesmerizing. I saw another review where someone describes Leesa Cross-Smith’s writing like a warm blanket. I couldn’t agree more! There was something very comforting about Vincent coming into herself and reflecting on her life and her future choices at hand. I absolutely love lyrical prose and you will definitely find that in this book. By the ending, I felt like I had watched an impassioned French film which actually sent me into a happy cry when it was over.

Ultimately, Half-Blown Rose was such an immersive literary experience, which are my very favorite kinds of books. If you love the things I mentioned above, you will definitely enjoy this one! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to @grandcentralpublishing and #netgalley for my advanced e-arc in exchange for an honest review

I struggled with this book. I supported Vincent’s alone time in Paris after her Louth of a husband published a book that revealed secrets about his life that he failed to tell her. I understood her getting involved with the younger guy. What I didn’t care for was how she strung both men along, deliberately lying to Cillian and not being honest with Loup.
The ending left me yelling you have to be kidding me. I hate being left in the lurch.
I’m sure other readers will love this book, but I didn’t.

When I received the notification that HALF-BLOWN ROSE was on my NetGalley shelf, I abandoned the book I was already reading and hid myself away from my family so I could escape to Paris with Vincent, Loup, Agathe, the Laurents, Baptiste, and Mina. As with her previous novels, Leesa Cross-Smith has created a story about an engaging woman facing a big decision, and again, she's created a world where the reader falls in love with the characters on page one. I've loved her other books and have always appreciated the way the worlds she creates are filled with taste, smell, and sensation -- you're so grounded in the story. This book is sexy and sensuous, and I was so mad when it ended! More Vincent, please!

"The best way to know life is to love many things."

While Half-Blown Rose is lush and dreamy, it just wasn't for me. Disclaimer: I do tend to stay away from fictional books about extramarital affairs involving couples with children because that's not my idea of ~fun~. That being said, my issue with Half-Blown Rose wasn't the fact that Vincent, a 44-year-old woman, starts up a passionate love affair with a 24-year-old Timothée Chalamet lookalike in Paris following her estrangement with her husband. In this case, her children are all grown up. Rather, my issue with Half-Blown Rose was that nothing really happens.

Hear me out: Half-Blown Rose is marketed as a story about a woman remaking her life, yet I felt like there was very little to no character development. At its core, Half-Blown Rose is 384 pages of Vincent's love affair in Paris and, at one point, it gets a tad bit tiring to read, especially with Vincent going back and forth between Cillian, her estranged husband, and Loup, her lover. Don't get me started about the ending.

There are some positives:

- The writing transported me to Paris

- I can tell Leesa Cross-Smith went above and beyond because there are playlists embedded throughout Half-Blown Rose

But in the end, Half-Blown Rose was frustrating to read with Vincent choosing to live her life in denial about her reality. That might be the point of the book, so I chalk it up to me (late 20's) not being the target audience.

Leesa Cross-Smith has quickly become one of my favorite writers so as soon as I saw she had a new novel coming out, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on a preview copy. As with her previous novels Whiskey & Ribbons and This Close to Okay, her upcoming novel Half-Blown Rose is very much a novel exploring identity through a time of dramatic personal change. There’s a lightness and easy optimism to Half-Blown Rose that’s difficult to describe. Where so many novels about self-discovery feel heavy and rooted in tragedy, the heroine of this novel doesn’t feel dragged down by the betrayal she’s recently experienced. There are pain and anger to be sure, but it isn’t debilitating in the way so often portrayed. Nor does the main character’s transformation feel like it’s driven by a need to change specifically in reaction to what’s happened. Rather, so much of the novel takes place in a space of indecision and, therefore, of possibility, which lends even the more somber moments of the novel a hopeful undercurrent rather than a tragic or angry one.

Vincent is living in Paris, teaching classes at a local museum and selling her hand-made jewelry online after separating from her husband of twenty-four years. Her husband, Cillian, has published several novels but his latest is autobiographical in nature and delves into the origins of their relationship and a part of his past he never told her about – a child he fathered at fifteen with a girl his parents moved him half-a-world away from and whom he never contacted in the years since… It’s also a book he didn’t talk to Vincent about or let her read before it published, blind-siding her and laying their personal life bare for the world to see. As she decides what to do about her marriage, Vincent embarks on a flirtation with one of her (much younger) students, Loup, and finds herself more drawn to a possible future in Paris, especially since her children are grown. But what would her family and friends make of her developing relationship with Loup (and does she even care what they think)?

One of the things about Half-Blown Rose that I found most compelling was the nature of the betrayal that led Vincent to separate from Cillian. Though she was embarrassed and a bit humiliated to be learning her husband’s secrets the way she did (and to have so much of own relationship with her husband put on such public display), there is less anger and resentment toward him by the time the reader meets her. The shift Vincent feels is also less about what Cillian did to her personally and more about the dissonance in his character between what she thought she knew, what she thought him capable of, and the truth of who he’d been all along. Because of this, Vincent’s journey through the novel is less about building herself up after being torn down and is more about change in general – it lacks a lot of the negativity and despair that usually triggers transformation. I found it surprisingly refreshing, because not all growth is triggered by complete devastation or tragedy and not all change is painful (sometimes it’s just a little uncomfortable, sometimes it’s actually fun and a lot of the time it runs the gambit).

Time is handled in an interesting way in the novel. The narrative doesn’t really jump around. Instead it’s marked through art. The reader learns the extent of Cillian’s betrayal through excerpts of his novel rather than a series of flashbacks. Vincent has playlists that are sprinkled throughout but most often center around her traveling. The classes Vincent teaches at the museum focus a lot on memory and noticing things in the moment, especially color, and the ways the senses bring moments and memories to life. The exercises extend into how she interacts with her family and friends and help to build and reinforce interpersonal connections that are going to ultimately help bridge their collective past (before Cillian’s book published) to the still-forming future. Though the novel can feel idealistic at times, there is a sharp reality to it that keeps it from feeling too sappy or emotionally manipulative (perhaps because it tends to approach common tropes from different or unexpected angles…). Can’t completely put my finger on it, but where so many novels like this might push the reader to be inspired, to want to have a similar journey of self-discovery, Half-Blown Rose feels like it’s content to just be what it is and let the reader take what they will from it.

Half-Blown Rose will be available May 31, 2022.

Half-Blown Rose was a beautiful book. Over the course of nearly a year the book follows Vincent (a woman), primarily in Paris but also for brief periods in other locations around Europe and in NYC. The descriptions of Vincent's life in Paris were by far the most enjoyable aspect of this book. Everything from Vincent's apartment to her dinner's and coffee with friends to concerts and walking by the Seine romanticized Paris and the life Vincent was leading there. I enjoyed that Vincent, a woman in her mid-40s, was the main character and was stylish and sexy and cool, as women in this age range are often skipped over in literature or portrayed only as side characters. I also enjoyed the additions to the book that were separate from the narrative, Vincent's playlists, the letters, the excerpts from Cillian's book. They added just enough without becoming overwhelming. Between Vincent's playlists and the movies she watched throughout there were a lot of great recommendations!

Although there were times I was frustrated with Vincent throughout the book, I also felt like her non-linear emotional journey was more realistic to what people in her situation may experience. This book touches on a number of different topics related to both Vincent and the characters surrounding her, including secrecy in marriage/relationships, the power dynamic in age-gap relationships, polyamory, family dynamics that fall outside of a heteronormative, nuclear structure and privilege that comes with wealth. As the story mainly revolves around the decisions Vincent is making in relation to her marriage and life in Paris, these topics are not explored in depth but discussed in various ways throughout the book. There are no prominent queer storylines (although there is at least one queer character.) Overall, I really enjoyed this book and thank the author, Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for access to the ARC!

Leesa Cross-Smith is a beautiful writer, and I was instantly transported to Paris with Vincent as she tries to figure out what comes next. I loved the first part of the book, especially the mystery of what Cillian exactly did, but it was downhill for me after that. There is a lot of freedom in this book, and I think I was expecting something a bit different. I’m also not a fan of affair plot lines, and that is my bad for not paying better attention to the synopsis. The ending was not my favorite, either. Not for me, but I know others who will love it. If you’re a fan of slow books filled with beautiful prose, then check this one out, especially if you love the French lifestyle.

Vincent, the daughter of two successful artists, has enjoyed a mostly privileged life. She has taught art while her husband Cillian has been a best-selling author. When his latest book reveals a surprising betrayal, Vincent needs to put some distance between them to figure out who she really is.

This book, while unique, was just okay to me. I wanted to love it, especially since I adored the cover and premise, but it just didn’t hold my attention the way I wanted it too. Although the story includes sections such as Vincent’s song playlists and past selections, it seemed a little dragged out. If I didn’t commit to read it for a review, I most likely would not have finished this one.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC. “Half Blown Rose” will be released May 31st.

I didn't love this book. Vincent is 44 and has just found out a large, life changing secret that her husband of 25 years, Cillian, has kept from her. She found out in his newly published book which he did not inform her about before it was published. It devastated her, and she has moved to Paris with the intent to reunite with her husband at their son's wedding in a year so she has time to evaluate her feeling and wishes for their future. While in Paris she forms some strong friendships, and begins a relationship with one of her students (Loup) who is 20 years her junior.
Things I liked: Vincent. She is smart and strong and cool. She says what she thinks and feels and I really enjoyed reading her interactions with her friends in Paris and with Loup. Those were my favorite bits of the book.
What I didn't like: Vincent's inability to make a decision regarding her relationship with her husband. He was the worst, and she kept taking his calls and answering his texts and when they see each other again at the end she is still not making a choice. The book dragged on a bit and occasionally chapters from Cillian's book were interjected in here and there, which I skimmed over (or skipped entirely) because who cares.
I really loved Cross-Smiths previous novels but this one just wasn't for me!

' "Celui qui vit verra," he says. He who lives will see.' - Leesa Cross-Smith, Half-Blown Rose

A colorful story of love, desire, independence, longing, family, adventure and finding oneself. Vin, after a hurtful event with her husband creates a life in Paris. Surrounded by art, food, music and friends, she lives her best life. Yet the family on the other side of the ocean wonders how this will all end - her husband Cillian continues to express his undying love while her new life provides her a door to exploring her real self. Told with love, lust and laughter Half-Blown Rose is an amazing adventure into what could be when we listen to our heart!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this eARC!

The word I kept thinking about as I read this book was “mature”. Half-Blown Rose addresses so many complicated & deep issues, specifically those in a long-term marriage. The fact Vincent was having an affair seemed to be validated by her husband’s failure to divulge his secret child which bothered me a bit. This book felt slow & sporadic at times, but peaked my interest around 2/3 of the way through and I was intrigued through the ending.

Cross-Smith’s descriptions of the French lifestyle & the uniqueness of Paris can be felt from start to finish and really made me feel like I was sitting in the apartment in Paris with Vincent and Loup.

This is really 3.5 stars, in my opinion. For those that love the French lifestyle, a slow, detailed plot, and art, pick this one up!

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!