Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Drawn
AUTHOR: Elle Brownlee
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 200 Pages
RELEASE DATE: October 21, 2016
BLURB:
Sebastian (Sen) Holt is an artist currently in New Orleans. He’s always been a wanderer, believing in fate and following signs to guide his destiny. Although he itches to pull up stakes, getting a painting into a gallery keeps him rooted. One morning his good friend calls him in desperate need of help with her cleaning business. Her regular cleaner flaked, she can’t lose her client, and there’s no one else.
The job is at a large and recently restored house—and the owner, Morgan Ballard, comes home unexpectedly. They are immediately drawn together, as if they know each other, but they’ve never met. As they grow closer, Morgan behaves like two people. Sometimes he’s friendly and casual, and other times intimate and demanding. Sen juggles his painting through bursts of vision-like inspiration, the cleaning job, and an unexpected commission—all while trying to unlock the growing mystery of the intense connection he feels to Morgan. He’s not sure which scares him more—the strangeness surrounding their growing bond or that he’s found someone to make him reconsider his lifelong wanderlust.
REVIEW:
I like to read books without reading the blurb first, so I have no idea what the story is about. Honestly, I probably read the blurb when I selected the book to review, but I haven’t looked at it again until this very minute while I’m doing this review. So I had no preconceived notion about what the book was about.
There is a hidden story in the book, which I won’t give any spoilers on, but I figured it out fairly quickly during the read. I was intrigued. I really liked the background and character development.
Sen is an artist living in New Orleans. He has always been a wanderer. His parents are the stereotypical hippies who have traveled for years in an old bus. Sen was raised on the road, and educated at ‘home’…or in this case the bus. His entire family is artistic, so not surprisingly Sen grew up to be an artist.
When we meet Sen, he has been asked by his best friend to fill in for one of her staff who didn’t show for work. The friend owns a cleaning business, and Sen agrees to fill in for the day. When he arrives at the address, he finds a veritable mansion which has been recently restored. It is spotless…so why does the mysterious owner need a cleaning person…and for four hours a week?
Morgan is the homeowner. He has a reason for keeping the house nearly empty, and spotless, but we don’t learn it until later in the story, so it is mystery most of the way through.
Something is odd about Morgan. Sen is picking up strange vibes from him, and Morgan seems to be two different people. Add to that the fact that Sen had a daytime nightmare when he fell asleep at Morgan’s house the first day he cleaned it, and since then Sen’s artist block is gone and he is producing strange paintings of people he sees in dreams and visions.
I really enjoyed the book, but to keep it honest, I had gotten my hopes up for more. I was reading this book last night and got to an hour left according to my Kindle, so I turned the lights off and saved it for today in anticipation. Once the underlying mystery was revealed…I had hoped for more details, but they weren’t forthcoming. In fact, the whole big reveal was a little bit of an anti-climatic moment, handled in an “oh…we should have known” way. I personally think some pages dedicated to the subjects of that background mystery would have been really welcome and made for a more exciting and interesting transition.
My disappointment aside, I did enjoy the book. The ending wrapped up in a nice, if fairly mundane HEA. I’m going to rate it as “I Liked It A Lot / Would Recommend It,” or 4.0 on our rating scale. With another chapter or two near the end, I think the story would have suited me more.
RATING: 
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