Boy, did I want to love this novel. The idea of the plot is great. But it needed a ruthless editor. With less funky pacing, fewer pages, and less tortuous sentences, this book would shine.

I loved the premise but I started reading this back in February and it was so incredibly dense I couldn't get into it. I love a good novel set in the art world but this was painstakingly slow in the set up. Chalk it up to great concept, lacking execution.

This was a story that I sunk right into and forgot where I was. I loved the backstory and the characters! Definitely recommend!

This books seemed like something I would love (art history!) but it ultimately fell flat. The writing felt awkward, stilted, and inconsistent, making the narrative overall disjointed. Some of the plot points felt really convenient and the characters felt underdeveloped.

Cate is a doctoral candidate and she is assigned an advisor who doesn’t seem too interested. Cate is desperate to impress him and goes through great lengths to do so. She discovers a Baroque painting and believes it to be real. She is unsure of its authenticity and travels to Spain. There she meets Antonio, who is trying to save his family’s legacy. Together they go on an adventure looking for the truth and avoid destroying their own destinies. A suspenseful thriller about a mysterious painting. Well written characters and a sensational plot. The author gives the reader a small glimpse into the art world and an art history lesson.

Disclaimer: Thank you NetGalley and She Writes Press for this review copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Attribution is a worthy debut offering from Linda Moore and She Writes Press. We follow our protagonist, Cate Adamson, a young art history doctoral student in NYC as she makes her way through the maze of the art world after discovering a hidden unattributed Baroque masterpiece in a storage room of the university. Is her misogynist advisor trustworthy or part of the cover up? Who can she trust? Her need to find an ally in the art world takes her to Spain where she meets Antonio Olivares and this is where my favorite part of the story begins and continues all of the way to the delightful ending.

With the exception of a couple of eye rolling, improbale poor decisions and unlikely coincidences I found Attribution to be a credible, interesting, and compelling read. I look forward to reading more from Linda Moore.

I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.

Attribution should have been a book that worked for me. Linda Moore’s novel, which was published back on October 11, 2022, had art and history with a dash of intrigue. All things I very much enjoy. But something just didn’t click and the novel, with such promise, ended up being a miss for me.

Here’s the book’s description:
Art historian Cate Adamson, still grieving the death of her brother and desperate to succeed, leaves her troubled parents in the Midwest to complete her doctorate in New York, only to find herself assigned to a misogynist advisor. She attempts to impress him until she discovers a hidden painting, possibly a Baroque masterpiece, in the university basement. Risking her career, financial disaster, and further alienation from her family, she flees to Spain with the painting to consult art experts.
Antonio, an impoverished duke, clings to the decaying legacy of the House of Olivares. When he meets Cate on the train to Seville, he joins her search, and together they uncover evidence in his five hundred-year old library to support the painting's provenance including a document about the artist's final years that will shock the titans of art history. But Cate vacillates about revealing the truth, fearful that it may destroy her career, her family's expectations, and her future with Antonio.
I wasn’t totally sure why this book didn’t work for me at the time I read it and I’m even less sure now, all these months later. I can tell my initial feelings were accurate and the fact that the story didn’t stick with me is telling. Sometimes I may not initially love a book but once I sit with it awhile, I find myself still thinking about it or finally understanding some of the nuances that I had missed when I was reading it. That was not the case with Attribution. I don’t want to say I’ve forgotten all of it, because I haven’t, but the story and the writing have not stayed with me.

I think, perhaps, part of my issue was with Cate herself. She didn’t make a ton of sense to me and I questioned almost every single one of her choices. She seemed scared but also impulsive and brave and her personality remained a mystery to me throughout the entire book. I know it’s easier to hide from grief but pushing her parents away wasn’t helping any of them. I also haven’t been trying to pursue a…ok, I actually forget what piece of paper Cate is trying to get in the book so let’s go with…PhD so I really don’t understand the cutthroat world of research and advisors and all that stuff. I also think any readers who aren’t involved in the art world themselves (like me) will be a bit confused at how that world works and why Cate’s career is in such jeopardy.



As I said at the start, this book should have worked for me. I love the idea of art history and missing art. Well, I don’t love that art is missing or was stolen but the uncovering process is thrilling to me. I love the hunt for provenance and restoring a piece of art to its rightful owners. I love looking at art (I could happily spend a day wandering through art galleries) and I love creating it (though I’m not an expert by any means). I should, then, love reading about art. And I did enjoy the thought and care that I could tell Moore put into the story. She understands art and that world. That love and passion did come through and I was glad of that.

I’ll end by saying I seem to be very much in the minority regarding my feelings about Attribution. The Goodreads page for Linda Moore’s novel gives it a very respectable 4.35 average rating. Could it be that I got too weighed down by nitpicky things and just couldn’t be as wowed by the story as others have been? Quite possibly. I’d say it’s still one to consider if you absolutely adore art history and art mystery!

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the publisher, She Writes Press, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*

Initially I was in two minds with ‘Attribution’. The first half of the book was not appealing to me. I found it a bit repetitive. Cate, the lead character, was going on an apparently wild goose chase, so I was distracted and annoyed by her insecurities. And because I heard rave reviews of this fictional work, luckily I didn’t give up.

The second part is intriguing and even instructive in terms of the art world and the research required for attributions.

In a nutshell, it is a work that grows and improves like good wines.

Who would have thought that a story about a lost work of art could be so riveting? A doctoral student discovers an old painting when tasked with doing an inventory of her institution’s art works. This leads her to Spain where she tries to authenticate this work to Diego Velazquez.

This was well written and an intriguing read which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Attribution is a passionate, comprehensive and intriguing read. Linda Moore's passion and research shine through, for readers are instantly immersed in the world of a mysterious painting. The painting lures Cate, an NYCU doctoral student, out from her shadows of doubt and embarks on a memorable journey of honesty and courage. This book is much more than art history as it deals with relatable workplace sexism issues, gripping and self-imposed family expectations and realistic yet endearing romance. Elements of betrayal, doubt, anger and hope are thoroughly embraced with enhanced authenticity of all characters. I would have loved the ending to be more definite, but given the overarching theme, it was beautifully executed. Lovers of history, art and restoration are in for a memorable and lingering treat. A 5-star read all the way! I'm certainly looking forward to reading more of Linda's work!

Thank you to NetGalley and She Writes Press for giving me a review copy. This honest review is left voluntarily.

This is a fascinating story set in the world of academia and art history. Cate is a PhD student in a prestigious art history program. She is struggling with her misogynistic advisor who seems determined to devalue her and set her up for failure. She is under deadline to come up with an approved thesis topic and he diverts her attention by assigning her the busywork task of inventorying the school's art works. She is almost finished when she happens upon an undocumented, dank storage area and discovers a hidden gem of a painting that she immediately knows is something special. She holds on to the painting and is annoyed by her advisor's curt dismissal of her ideas so she doesn't tell him about it. Instead, she takes advantage of the holiday break to fly off to Spain to have the painting looked at to determine whether it is a masterpiece from the Spanish Golden Age. Although this decision is questionable and seems like a bad idea, I enjoyed her journey and an insight into the process of attributing paintings.

Thank you to She Writes Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book had the ingredients of something I would love (that's why I requested the title, after all): art, history, a female protagonist. While the premise is as lovely as it sounds, and I can see this book having wide appeal to a large audience of readers, I don't think I am part of that audience.

I was expecting something in the vein of Tracy Chevalier, whose novels I tend to enjoy and who incorporates many of the same ingredients, but Moore's prose was distractingly inconsistent and at times stilted or affected. I wanted so badly to get a sense for her singular and authentic voice, which would have helped to unify a sometimes disjointed narrative. I'd say this novel is somewhere in the gray area between plot- and character-driven, but perhaps only because neither the plot nor the characters felt especially full. Plot points often seemed too convenient and characters felt insufficiently nuanced, with backstories (e.g. Cate's brother's death) being neatly simplified into a stage for character development. It all felt a bit derived from the formula of a creative writing class, and lacking the development to make the premise reach its potential.

Art historian, Cate Anderson, struggles to impress her misogynistic doctorate advisor. We follow her from New York to Spain - fleeing with a painting in order to consult experts and prove her place within the art world. In Spain, she meets Antonio, a Duke, with more ties to her work than she thinks.

I really enjoyed learning about seventeenth century Spanish art, and the novel was really well researched. Moore’s background in art really shines through and I found myself really enjoying the depictions of art and Spain. I also liked the overarching theme of feminism and how men can often overtake and dismiss women and how hard women have to work in order to get the recognition that they deserve.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the prose and did feel as though sometimes it was inconsistent; at times flowery, and other times, convoluted. I’m also quite fussy when it comes to dialogue, and the dialogue here was also hit or miss for me. Without giving away any spoilers, the novel also just kind of abruptly ended for me??

Overall, it was an easy read and I liked being in the world of Spanish art! An enjoyable debut.

We start with the main character Cate, an art historian trying to complete her doctorate. Her assigned advisor is a sexist man that doesn’t hide his contempt for her. Their interactions are pretty maddening, and feel true to life as a female in the corporate world.

In the cataloging of their art on campus, Cate accidentally finds herself stealing what could be a masterpiece she had found hidden away on her college campus. While she initially felt guilty for taking it off campus, it’s confusing as to why she chose to then leave the country with it. Things get a little twisted and off-kilter when Cate ends up meeting a duke on the train in Spain, and he ends up trying to help her find out the origins of the painting. The plot began to lose any authenticity it had initially roared out of the gates with. It became a strange mishmash of two worlds that I didn’t necessarily think lent credibility to the plot.

I wanted to love this book so much. It held my interest until the halfway mark, but to me ended up seeming a bit disjointed. The dialogue also disintegrated for me, and the characters started to lack believability.

But a few twists and turns later, I would say this novel was a quick and enjoyable read. Just not what I had expected.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

ATTRIBUTION
BY: LINDA MOORE

First, I must preface my review, by thanking my Good Reads friend Darla, for writing such a Brilliant review--that led me to discovering this gem called, "Attribution," written by the talented Author, Linda Moore. Please read Darla's Fantastic review, because it was so well written it intrigued me to request this and read it for myself. I concur with Darla, that this is a Five Star reading experience. I think that anybody that appreciates Art History and loves a well executed story will love this. I LOVED IT! Anybody who loves art will also love this under rated Diamond of a story. Anybody who loves to read a great mystery will also love, "Attribution". So make sure that you put this on your "to be read," pile or pre-order your copy today. You will not be sorry that you did. It is still available to request.

This masterpiece has a whopper of a twist that starts at about 67% into this Fantastic Historical novel. One that elevates this to its worthy Five Golden Stars! It starts in the basement of a storeroom at New York City University filled with spiderwebs that attest that this storage room hasn't been entered in years if not decades. Cate is an undergraduate there working to finish the art inventory today, that will likely dismiss the entire undergraduate team in their department. She has been the one who has supervised their assignment to find every piece of artwork either in the remodeled climate controlled vault or the art that hangs in their department on the walls in Hamilton Hall. The particular storage room that she came across, when she was leaving the art vault to make a phone call was not listed, nor pointed out by the registrar. It is a dank cellar which would be the last place anything of value would be kept, especially not art.

She thinks that anybody with wisdom would stop now, give Professor Jones the forms with the inventory, all checked off and accounted for--every last item. She is quite sure that he gave her this assignment as busy work, to avoid another dissertation meeting with her, so that he could satisfy himself that he met his requirements. The two of them couldn't reach an agreement, because for every proposal she made, he would come up with a host of reasons why her ideas fell short. This whole inventory project was a waste of precious time, that could be more wisely spent doing dissertation research. I got the feeling that Professor Jones was determined for Cate to miss her dissertation deadline, due to chauvinistic reasons. He knows that the Holidays were fast approaching and, that she would be disqualified, if she didn't have a subject for her dissertation by January 15th. This whole inventory assignment was his way of ensuring that she failed. He was not doing her any favors by making sure that she didn't meet the deadline, by shooting down all of her suggestions and diverting her attention, by assigning her the inventory that robbed her of dissertation research. Soon everybody would be celebrating Christmas and the New Year, and she would be without her thesis, that he would be in charge of her choice, because her subject needed his approval. The University would be shut down and he seemed to be in favor of the clock ticking down by his wasting of her time. He seemed arrogant and a misogynist to me.

Cate doubted that Professor Jones knew about this cellar room, that a security guard had to be summoned to unlock the door. At first he refused, but then relented after Cate offered him a drink from her water bottle. As the security guard found the key, he extracted a promise from her, that he wasn't involved in unlocking the door. After moving some boxes Cate found an ornate chest with carvings that she swore looked like it came from the 1600's. As she reluctantly put her arm in and felt around, there seemed to be the fabric of a rolled up painting. A canvas that was weighed down, and rolled up a number of times, paint side out, to prevent cracking, as was the practice of the last century. Using the light from her cellphone she gasped, as she witnessed rich pigments, such as lapis luzuli, which she knew was only used on works that mattered. I, a novice, even knew that detail. Red lake carmine that was granular proving that the pigments had been ground up was another priceless color, and as she examined the backside of the linen covered with irregular slubs, only found in hand woven fabric. She knew that she had found something great. Has your instinct ever told you that you were right, when everything else argued against something that you dared not whisper? In Cate's case from her intense studies she knew...she was witnessing an attribution that contributed to her next bold move to take a risk.

Not wanting to be dismissed yet again by Professor Jones, Cate wraps the rolled up painting in the parchment paper and heads to the third floor and uses a humidifier. From years of sitting at the bottom of that trunk, she has an idea of what she has found. As she places the rolled up painting, into the machine, she knows that she won't be disturbed. As she waits her mind drifts back to two Christmases ago, when her beloved younger brother died from drowning. Cate has been keeping a secret from her grief stricken parents. It is all her fault. She can't go back to Michigan to her parents for this Christmas. She left the painting overnight to allow the humidifier to do its job, so that she was back before the department opened at 7:00 AM. Just as she thought, it was a find from the Baroque ages. She had a meeting with Professor Jones, for her dissertation research, for which he was late. He arrived and was even more dismissive. Not bothering to look at what she had prepared. She decided not to show him the painting of what she found, by the way he was treating her. She was the only female in a ten student prestigious program. His arrogance had her so upset, that she forgot to return the painting, and by the next day there was no admittance into the building, because of a bomb scare.

Cate makes some questionable decisions during the Christmas break. Fate mixed with some good and bad luck determines the trajectory of her attempts to prove what she suspects. I appreciated the early mentions of Artemisia Gentileschi as both a favorite of Cate, but I suspect the Author's, as well, as a personal favorite of mine. Her paintings and work were discovered by me when I was a very young woman. To say anymore would be to give spoilers. Just know that as much as you love a great book as a work of art--so too, is this novel! I highly, highly recommend this breathtaking journey. Linda Moore, if I could award you one-hundred stars for this masterpiece, I would! A Favorite!

Publication Date: October 11, 2022

Thank you to Net Galley, Linda Moore and She Writes Press for generously providing me with my ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#Attribution #LindaMoore #SheWritesPress #NetGalley

It’s all just a bit too cardboard-cut-outty: the hard-done-by art history student, the misogynistic professor, the locked basement room containing a forgotten masterpiece…

Linda Moore has spent some months in Spain doing art history, but the practices she describes (especially handling priceless masterpieces) are purely fictional and would frighten the living daylights out of anybody in the art conservation business.

Too full of “it just so happened”: A NY art history graduate manages to find a possible Velásquez painting in a forgotten storeroom of her university. Velásquez just happened to be the expertise of her professor. Despite being completely broke, she manages to fly to Seville from the U.S. to have the painting authenicated, forging the authorisation papers on her laptop and aided by copious amounts of coffee from coffee shops. In Seville, she’s able to stay at the most expensive hotel thanks to a friend that just so happened to give her his frequent traveller points. Aaand on the train there she just manages to meet a local nobleman who - obviously - just falls for her and it just so happens that he’s got an apartment in Seville where she can stay free of charge when her money runs out. His library also just happens to contain the vital clue to her research. Per-lease!

At times, the prose enters clumsy creative-writing-classes style: “The shower ran over her body like baptismal water and rehydrated her drooping limbs.”

A novel that is an okay read if you flick off your Probability Switch.

Attribution is a stunningly well-written and entirely engrossing look into the world of art history and the politics of the academic world. The characters are beautifully drawn and the plot and pacing are perfect. This felt like a real treat of a read!

Linda Moore’s novel “Attribution” is based on that endlessly fascinating premise – uncovering the mystery behind great works of art. It joins a distinguished lineage of similarly based novels such as “The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos” by Dominic Smith, “Headlong” by Michael Frayn, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Tracy Chevalier and of course the blockbuster bestseller “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt. Fiction and painting are two forms of art that have a natural synergy, the visual and the literary sharing a fundamental affinity that shapes our interpretation of story, whether presented through brushstrokes or words. When you introduce the question of what is truth and what is deception, you have a compelling impetus for the unravelling of a mystery.

As an art historian who studied in Madrid and spent time researching the masters of the Spanish Golden Age at the Prado Museum herself, Moore is eminently qualified to tell this story of Cate Adamson, a struggling doctoral candidate who stumbles upon an unknown painting in a cobwebby basement of New York University. It is this mysterious work, apparently an undiscovered Baroque masterpiece, that drives Cate, unbeknownst to her academic advisor and university authorities, to risk everything by taking the painting to Spain to investigate its lineage.

The author’s passion for her subject and the obvious scholarship that underpins the narrative make this story engrossing. From the beginning the reader is drawn into the intrigue surrounding the painting and is caught up in the many conflicts Cate faces in weighing up the personal cost of disclosing the truth.

Part of that personal cost is the romance that develops with Antonio, an impoverished Spanish duke with familial links to the provenance of the painting. The playing out of this relationship from the coincidental meeting on a train to the fortuitous discovery of ancient documents in the private library of the Olivares family, to which Antonio belongs, felt contrived. Antonio never materialises into anything beyond a shadowy character inserted into the story in the manner of a Deus ex Machina to move the plot along, provide some gratuitous love scenes and finally be instrumental in the unearthing of the pivotal document that ultimately proves the truth behind the painting.

That the story is gripping is evidenced by the fact that I couldn’t wait to see how it ended and this is a credit to the author’s inspiration in devising the plot. There were places however where the prose didn’t live up to the story. For example there are some clunky metaphors (“the pressure to secure Jones’s approval … buzzed in her ears like a swarm of hornets”, overly lavish descriptions (“painted poetry glowed and throbbed with passion”), awkward constructions (“it was her turn to shudder-nod her head”, “she had to take a breath, disappear the tears and at once, became both relieved and regretful”, “they tumbled into a bar”, “Antonio touched her arm with his hand”), unnecessary and irritating repetitions in regard to “the messenger bag” – why not after the first description, just “bag”). These are perhaps picky criticisms but the problem becomes that when such distractions arise they interrupt the flow of the story and disrupt reader engagement.

However the story premise is brilliant and the plot not only absorbing but enriched by the multilayered explorations of the role of women, not only in the seventeenth century but in the contemporary and sadly still unapologetically sexist culture of academia.

Readers who love reading about art, history, academia and the glories of Spain will enjoy this book.

Thank you to She Writes Press who kindly provided an advance copy of the book for me to read.

Ernest Hemingway said, “write about what you know” and that’s exactly what Linda Moore did. She took her extensive knowledge of art history, the restoration of canvas paintings and how the art market works and placed it in her beautifully-written story. She then added romance to make it a high-spirited adventure.

The character we pay attention to is Cate, a NYCU doctoral student. She has a meeting with Professor Jones to review her dissertation right before the Christmas holiday. She was easily intimidated by him as he felt that women didn’t belong in his art history program. She just finished doing an inventory of the art for him. In a dark room with cobwebs, she found a rolled-up canvas in an old wooden chest that was mysterious and looked like it may have value. It was taken to the Conservation Center where the stiffness of the canvas was released by the humidity chamber. She brought it to the meeting with Dr. Jones. He asked what was in the tube but she decided not to show it to him until she had more information about the artist.

A trip to Spain was next on her list with the art to do more research. It would be a challenge as he didn’t authorize grant money for her to be there. It would be out of pocket. It was also a huge risk to take the art owned by the university out of the country without permission. But she was willing to do this as she was convinced it could bring her promising results with a male group of art historians. “Women struggle to get recognized.”

The book put me on the edge of my seat worrying about the art as anything could happen to it. The canvas could be punctured, stolen, and damaged in a number of ways. Every part of the narrative was put together with great suspense. It focused on art, history, competition, relationships and love. “The art world has many layers.” This is a book I didn’t want to end. It’s a great conversation piece which goes beyond the story to make the reader think about consequences in life. The amount of research done by the author was impressive.

My thanks to Linda Moore, She Writes Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read this advanced copy with the expected release date of October 11, 2022.

I enjoyed this so much! I am 100% the target audience having studied art history. The story was so good and I was invested so quickly. I’m planning on buying a hard copy of this once released!