The Genius and the Muse by Elizabeth Hunter

Synopsis: When Kate Mitchell decided to research the mysterious portrait in the student gallery, she had no idea how her life would change. She thought she knew what she wanted in life. She had a great boyfriend, a promising career, and a clear path.

How could one simple portrait change all that?
A photograph. A sculpture. A painting. One clue leads to another, and Kate learns that pieces of the past might leave unexpected marks on her own future, too.
And how, exactly, did she end up in an irritable sculptor's studio? 
One portrait may hold the answers, but learning its secrets will challenge everything Kate thought she knew about love, art, and life. A single picture can tell more than one story, and in the end, a young artist will discover that every real love story is a unique work of art.

Review: I do not usually read contemporary romance novels like that but as the author was Elizabeth Hunter, I could not help myself but get into The Genius and the Muse. And I must say that I am very happy, I did not expect that but this book was wonderful.
 
Kate is a young woman who has everything in her life, a nice surfer boyfriend, a very interesting thesis about a renowned photographer whose work she loves about, and friends without whom she would be nothing. But everything changes when her boyfriend cheats on her and when her thesis on Reed carries her farther than she would have thought. Mainly when one day her teacher and friend explains to her that to understand Reed, this fabulous photographer, she must understand Sam Rhodes. But our heroine takes this comment to heart and tries to understand who this woman is and to know everything about her life with Reed and their separation. This quest will make her meet new friends or people who knew Sam and Reed closely to trace their history. She will even meet love at the same time.
 
I loved to follow Kate in her investigation. She will understand and learn everything there is to know in relation to Reed while learning more about herself and all the people around her. This is a life’s lesson that we can finds here. While following Kate in dailylife, we also follow the meeting and the life of Sam and Reed, ten years earlier, which allows us to better understand the characters and to see how they end up like that.
 
Javi was also a person that I loved to discover. We think at first he is a surly hermit but he also has a more vulnerable side and I loved seeing his change at the contact to Kate. Seeing both of them together was really nice as they are the perfect couple.
 
Elizabeth Hunter carried me aways with this new book, and I highly recommend it.