Check out this great new to me author in their debut book, Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry and get ready for fun, romance and more.
JOHANNA PORTER IS NOT SORRY
Author: Sara Read
ISBN:
9781525899980
Publication
Date: March 7, 2023
Publisher:
Graydon House
Contemporary Romance
Book
Summary:
A sharp, witty debut novel about a soccer mom who steals a world
famous portrait of herself from the narcissistic artist who was once her lover,
an impulsive crime that will re-frame her suburban life and make her question
her life choices.
The headlines dubbed it the art heist of the decade, but for
Johanna, it wasn’t theft, it was a rescue.
Twenty years ago, Johanna Porter was a rising star in the art
world. Now she’s an unknown soccer mom. When an invitation arrives to an elite
gallery opening for her former lover, the great Nestor Pinedo, Johanna wants to
throw it in the trash where it belongs. But with some styling help from her
daughter, she makes an appearance and comes face-to-face with the woman she was
before the powerful and jealous Nestor ruined her.
La Rosa Blanca is a portrait of Johanna
herself, young and fierce and fearless—a masterwork with a price tag to match.
When she cuts it out of its frame, rolls it up, and walks out, Johanna is only
taking back what was stolen from her.
Hiding out with La Rosa
Blanca in a shack on the Chesapeake Bay, Johanna digs into the raw work of
reviving her own skills while battling novice-thief paranoia, impostor
syndrome, and mom guilt. But Johanna doesn’t just want the painting, she wants to paint again. To harness her powerful
talent, she must defy everyone’s expectations—most of all her own—for what a
woman like her should be.
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Sneak Peek into Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry:
The
Pinedo family cordially invites you
to
a private party to celebrate the opening of
the
Nestor Pinedo Retrospective.
Friday,
January 20. Nine o’clock.
Shimon-West
Gallery,
North
Capitol Street, Washington, DC.
Johanna,
I
do hope you will join our little gathering. Father is finally starting to feel
his age and hopes very much to see you again. There are so few friends left
from the old days. Time comes for us all, no?
Saludos,
Pilar
Fuck their party. Fuck this expensive invitation
which some unpaid intern probably agonized over for weeks. Fuck Nestor Pinedo
and his retrospective. Fuck Pilar Pinedo and her little personal note in her
elegant handwriting. Fuck their amazing champagne and their interesting friends
and all of Nestor’s glorious paintings.
Fuck all of it. I am not going.
There’s half a bottle of the good whiskey
left in the cabinet above the fridge. I climb up there for it, then pour a
glass, neat. Here’s to telling Pilar and her heartless troll of a father to piss
off. I slap the invitation down on the counter, which is none too clean, cross
my arms and stare at it, as if it’s not quite safe to turn my back.
Dear
Pinedos, Johanna Porter warmly requests your presence at
leave-me-the-fuck-alone.
Dear
Pilar, For the sake of the young women in attendance, please ensure that Nestor
keeps his withered old dick in his pants. My regrets.
Dear
Nestor, My body will already be present on your canvases. The presence of my
Self was never particularly important.
She
doth protest too much—I know that’s what you’re
thinking. And yes, I doth. (Have you ever tried this whiskey, Templeton? It’s
delicious.)
A preopening party? Friends from the old
days? Since when was I a “friend”? Not since twenty years ago, and even
then—not exactly how I would characterize myself and Nestor. And Pilar hates my
guts. Yet I still can’t throw this invitation in the trash where it belongs.
Johanna
Porter disrespectfully declines.
There will be no paintings by me at that
show, but there will be paintings of me.
I refill my glass. As much as I detest Nestor and Pilar, they form a direct
line to the years when I was on fire. When I felt my own greatness. When I very
nearly made it real.
But I failed. The fire is dead. I’m
nobody. They are inviting me back inside—god knows why—but all that’s in it
for me now is great champagne and beautiful people and big, clean galleries
full of someone else’s art.
I hate galleries. They make me want to
cry.
It’s not that I didn’t like to sell. I
was good back then. I held a six-figure check with my name on it once. But now
no one knows me. Not even me. I snatch that sophisticated square of cardstock
from the counter, sloshing liquor on my wrist in the process.
Boo-hoo.
Pity the unfulfilled housewife. That’s what you’re thinking
now, right? I am not a housewife. I’m a single mother with a job. But fine, I
am unfulfilled. The very people inviting me to this party strangled my
career—my calling—in its cradle.
It’s been twenty years of exile and decline ever since. (Okay, I am getting
drunk and dramatic. So be it.)
Actually, let’s call it nineteen years of
exile and decline, overlaid with seventeen years of my baby girl, Mel. That’s
her, clomping down the hall to our apartment, still wearing her cleats from
practice. I set my drink and the invitation on the counter and try to clear up
the frown lines I can feel on my face.
She drops her duffel bag by the door and
comes to the kitchen. Seventeen years old, nine feet tall, and built like the
goddess of the hunt with a face to match. Not exactly, but that’s how she reads
to a room. More like five nine, all long, lean muscle, and glorious hair. She
towers over me as I hug her firm, sapling waist.
“Any plans tonight?”
At least half the time Mel comes over for
her weekends, she takes a shower, transforms herself from warrior-athlete to
sweet-smelling ingenue with a few swipes of powder and a hair tie, and is back
out the door before I can even get a good look at her.
“Nothing tonight.” She heads for the
refrigerator. “You coming on Sunday?”
Home game at ten. “Yep. I’ll be there.”
She drinks some milk straight from the
carton and forages a cheese stick from the dairy drawer.
“What’s the matter?” she says, not even
looking at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Mom.” She turns and raises an eyebrow. I
have never been able to do that.
They say predators can smell fear. Mel
Porter can smell existential distress. If I’m just pissy about the dishwasher
being broken, she barely notices. But if something is grating at my soul, she’s
all over it.
I pick up the invitation. Holding it up
by a corner, I let her read it.
Her brow crinkles. “I thought he was
dead.”
“Not dead. Just old.”
“Who’s Pilar?”
“His daughter. And publicist. She hates
my guts.”
“So why the note?”
“My question exactly.”
She takes the invitation and turns it
over. Looks at the matte detail from an early Pinedo on the back. Chews her
cheese stick in contemplation. “Are you going?”
“I don’t know.” I may be expert at lying
to myself, but I’ve never been any good at it with Mel.
She looks at me with those teddy-bear
brown eyes. I wish I’d had half her emotional intelligence when I was her age.
Or now, for that matter.
“What if you looked really smoking hot?”
I can’t help a good laugh at that. “Mel,
this body does not do smoking hot.”
“It could. I mean for your age, with the
right dress and some badass boots?”
I am writing mental Fuck you notes. Mel is already going shopping.
Mel goes to bed early, giving me some
alone time as I get ready for bed myself.
If it were just an invitation to see
Nestor—a dinner or a cocktail party or something—I wouldn’t still be thinking
about it. But it’s a gallery. And not just any gallery. Shimon-West is the elite gallery in the city. A shrine
where Art and Money go to get married. No matter the passage of time, I am not
over the lure of a place like that.
My invitation does not include a
plus-one. I would gate-crash a date, but honestly it would all be too much to
explain, even to Mel. If I go, it’s just easier to go alone, even if I have to
manufacture a smile and carry the weight of heartbreak in my chest the whole
night.
Hanging on the wall in my room is a
painting I did a year and a half after Nestor. As I’ve done many times before,
I take it down and hold it in my lap. It’s only twenty by thirty and unframed.
A self-portrait, mother and child, me and my Amelia. My baby Mel.
No, she’s not Nestor’s baby. She’s Ben’s
baby. As much as a girl can be like her father Mel is, down to the big dreamy
eyes and the shimmer of anxious energy.
I painted this one looking in a mirror
with Mel at my breast. A local collector offered me decent money for it at the
time, but there was no way I’d part with it, then or now. It’s part of my soul.
We have a weightless quality in this painting, almost hovering, but with the
gravity of Mel’s body on mine. Highly saturated shades of blue and purple
predominate. In the near background, a vase of red flowers bursts through the
midnight tones. The brushstrokes are subtle and confident. The arrangement of
our bodies has both languor and energy, and the way my head is tilted says
everything about how wholly I loved Mel, but also how I was burdened.
I shouldn’t, but I run my thumb over my
signature—in that corner, the paint is wearing thin—then hang it back above my
bed. My own mother died when I was seventeen. On my bureau I keep a picture of
her in a glass frame. She is wearing ice skates and standing by the entrance to
the rink, her cheeks pink with cold, and her smile winter-bright. I never got a
chance to paint her portrait from life.
In the morning, I startle awake to the
sound of Mel making a smoothie in the kitchen. Staring hard at the ceiling, I
contend with the truth.
Right in the center of who I am, a fire
once burned bright. It has been dormant a long time. Most of Mel’s life. She
brought me a long way from the broken young woman I was, accidentally pregnant
at twenty-six, but she is almost a woman herself now, and when I held that
goddamn invitation to Shimon-West in my hand, an ember sparked and glowed to
life. I tried to drown it with whiskey, but it’s tenacious. And it’s hungry
for a source of fuel. Who am I kidding with my snark and resistance?
I find Mel at the breakfast table, feet
up, looking at her phone.
“I’m going to that party.”
She puts down her phone and claps her
hands. “Yes. I knew it.”
At a gallery party you either need to
look like you make art or like you make money. Thus, smoking-hot women who used
to be artists (“Still are, Mom”) do
not go to private Pinedo parties in Gap dresses. Not even Anthro dresses. No.
While working artists can and do wear practically whatever they want,
smoking-hot women go to Pinedo parties in Rodarte dresses, Miyake suits, and
handmade shoes.
Mel understands this. She also
understands that smoking-hot former artists who teach art at her high school do
not shop anywhere within a mile of Rodarte, so she has located a consignment
store downtown. I may still spend half my paycheck on a garment, but according
to Mel we will achieve a high-class-kiss-my-ass look that will make me feel
like I’m doing them a favor showing up at their fucking party.
If only a dress could do that. But I do
know that a dress can buy a person that crucial hour of self-confidence that
will get her through the door. And once I’m in, I’ll sip some champagne, flirt
with rich men, and let the Pinedos see I’m fine,
thank you very much.
It’s gray out but mild for January, and Mel
and I take a comfortable walk with coffee in hand down the block from the
subway. She finds the building and the narrow door, and she leads us up a
flight of stairs to the boutique. The proprietress, sixtyish and slender with
a gray updo and amazing eyeliner, nods at us as we enter.
I’ve been in a lot of used clothing
stores, and I have no idea how this one got rid of that smell that all the
other ones have. Instead of dust and stagnation with an undertone of feet, this
place smells like a boudoir. And it’s not jammed with clothes the way they
always are. We move easily between racks of slacks, blouses, cocktail dresses,
gowns, coats. The side wall is tastefully arranged with shoes and accessories,
and windows in front let in a gentle light. Behind the antique desk that
serves as a counter, a large reproduction of Beardsley’s strange art nouveau
drawing John and Salome gives the
whole place an air of sex and conflict. I love it here.
Mel holds up a velvet minidress. I shake
my head. I’m too old for mini. I examine the garments, feeling like I should
have washed my hands. Gucci, Chanel, Ford, Herrera. I lift a long-sleeved black
gown off the rack.
Mel frowns. “You’re not going to a
funeral.”
“Can I help you find something?” the lady
with the eyeliner says from her desk.
Mel waves her over. The woman is about my
height and less intimidating than I first thought.
“She’s going to a private party at a
fancy art gallery,” Mel says. “Like really upscale. And she hates everyone
who’s going to be there, so she needs to look smoking hot. But not like she’s
trying. Like she just is.”
Lady Eyeliner laughs. Where Mel learned
to talk to salespeople I have no idea. It has to be genetic, and not from my
side. Mel is wearing slides, baggy sweats, and her father’s fleece pullover,
and her bun is coming loose, but this sophisticated woman takes to her
immediately.
They stand me in front of a full-length
mirror, and together they size me up, clearly confident that they can pull
this off. I wish I felt it myself. All I see are dark circles under tired eyes.
Narrow shoulders and a smallness in my posture. A woman who does not command
space. Mel brings over a dress that looks like a full-length slip in blood red.
I shrink some more.
Lady E understands me better. First a
black strapless. She shakes her head before I have a chance to. Too plain. She
comes back with a military-style shirt dress. Mel grimaces.
Finally I retreat to the fitting room and
try on a minimalist gray knit. Too big. Then a color-block shift. Not bad, but
Lady E says, “Cliché.” I unzip myself from it and sit on an upholstered stool
in my underwear. This is supposed to be fun, and I suppose it is. Fancy
shopping with my daughter is always fun. But this time the fun competes with
the voice inside that says Fraud. Poser. I
could find the perfect dress, but all it will take is someone asking me that
most miserable of cocktail-party questions, What
do you do? for it to all fall apart.
“Can you do one-shoulder?” Lady E calls
from across the store.
“I guess so.”
In a moment she slips a black velvet
dress through the door. The zipper is stiff and sticks in a couple of places as
I get it open. Then I step in and shimmy the dress up over my hips.
“Do you need help?” Lady E says. I crack
the door, and she steps in.
As she works the zipper closed, the dress
embraces my body like it’s known me carnally. Fitted around the ribs and waist,
it angles from the shoulder sharply across the bust, showing one collarbone.
The skirt is gathered at a seam below the waist where the velvet falls in
sculptural folds.
“What do you think?” Lady E smiles at my
reflection. She turns me so I can see the back.
“I think I like it.”
“Oscar de la Renta.” Her voice is gentle,
and I wish she were my friend. She smooths the skirt. “This wrap here is such a
nice detail. Like an upside-down tulip.”
I smile back at her. It’s the strangest
thing, a dress like this. It makes me feel like it could be possible. It could
even be fun.
Excerpted from Johanna
Porter is Not Sorry by Sara Read, Copyright © 2023 by Sara Read.
Published by Graydon House Books.
Author
Bio:
|
|
Originally from Washington, DC, SARA
READ tried the nine-to-five life for about a nanosecond before moving to
rural Virginia to become a flute-maker’s apprentice and traditional fiddle
player. Childbirth led her to a career in nursing. A cancer survivor herself,
she now has the distinct privilege of caring for cancer patients. She is
co-founder of #momswritersclub, a biweekly YouTube and live Twitter chat for
writers. Sara lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, two
teens, a terrier, and three snarky cats. She loves a long run, a long road
trip, and a long talk with a friend. www.sararead.net |
Author
Website: https://www.sararead.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarareadauthor/r
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/sarafinn11/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarareadauthor
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21955366.Sara_Read
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