Julianne Turner has spent thirty years restoring masterpieces. She never expected the life that needed saving to be her own.
At fifty-two, Julianne is one of the most respected art conservators in the world, with projects in Florence, Paris, Boston, and everywhere in between. She has built exactly the life she's always wanted. Successful, independent, and far too busy to wonder what she might have missed over the years.
Then a heart attack drops her from a restoration scaffold in Italy and leaves her with strict orders to slow down.
With nowhere else to go that feels remotely like home, Julianne returns to Cedar Springs, the small town she left thirty-two years ago and never came back to. She tells herself it’s temporary. A few months to recover, reconnect with the younger sister she barely knows anymore, and figure out how quickly she can get back to her real life.
Then she sees the mural. Faded and crumbling on the side of the old train depot, it’s the mural she painted the summer she was twenty alongside Alex Navarro, the boy she loved and left behind when the opportunity of a lifetime carried her across an ocean.
Alex stayed. At fifty-three, he has a home, an art cooperative, a community that loves him, and a life he loves. He stopped waiting for Julianne to return to a long time ago, and has no intention of letting her disrupt it now.
Unfortunately, Cedar Springs has other ideas.
Restoring the mural means Julianne and Alex must work side by side, uncovering layers of old paint, old choices, and everything they never managed to say. And as Julianne becomes tangled in her sister’s life, a gifted teenage artist’s uncertain future, and a town determined to remind her where she came from, she begins to wonder whether the life she raced so hard to build has room for something she never learned how to measure.
Home.
Warm, witty, and full of small-town heart, The Art of Starting Over is a later-in-life women’s fiction romance about second chances, sisters, found community, rediscovering what matters, and the courage to build a life you don’t need to escape from.
Perfect for readers who love mature heroines, closed-door romance, second-chance love stories, small-town women’s fiction, found family, creative heroines, and uplifting stories proving it’s never too late to choose differently.
Genre: General Fiction
At fifty-two, Julianne is one of the most respected art conservators in the world, with projects in Florence, Paris, Boston, and everywhere in between. She has built exactly the life she's always wanted. Successful, independent, and far too busy to wonder what she might have missed over the years.
Then a heart attack drops her from a restoration scaffold in Italy and leaves her with strict orders to slow down.
With nowhere else to go that feels remotely like home, Julianne returns to Cedar Springs, the small town she left thirty-two years ago and never came back to. She tells herself it’s temporary. A few months to recover, reconnect with the younger sister she barely knows anymore, and figure out how quickly she can get back to her real life.
Then she sees the mural. Faded and crumbling on the side of the old train depot, it’s the mural she painted the summer she was twenty alongside Alex Navarro, the boy she loved and left behind when the opportunity of a lifetime carried her across an ocean.
Alex stayed. At fifty-three, he has a home, an art cooperative, a community that loves him, and a life he loves. He stopped waiting for Julianne to return to a long time ago, and has no intention of letting her disrupt it now.
Unfortunately, Cedar Springs has other ideas.
Restoring the mural means Julianne and Alex must work side by side, uncovering layers of old paint, old choices, and everything they never managed to say. And as Julianne becomes tangled in her sister’s life, a gifted teenage artist’s uncertain future, and a town determined to remind her where she came from, she begins to wonder whether the life she raced so hard to build has room for something she never learned how to measure.
Home.
Warm, witty, and full of small-town heart, The Art of Starting Over is a later-in-life women’s fiction romance about second chances, sisters, found community, rediscovering what matters, and the courage to build a life you don’t need to escape from.
Perfect for readers who love mature heroines, closed-door romance, second-chance love stories, small-town women’s fiction, found family, creative heroines, and uplifting stories proving it’s never too late to choose differently.
Genre: General Fiction