“THE IMPASTO EFFECT’

Laurie Hollman

This complex, well-crafted novel tells a compelling story about the burden of unresolved identity and the complications of long-held secrets. A young woman, Cecelia, struggles to reconcile an emerging artistic identity with a conflicted past. She feels best when she calls herself Ceci. This novel is both a psychological rendering of a coming-of-age girl and a romantic thriller.

Young Cecilia buckles under the weight of expectations far beyond pressures a child and adolescent should experience. A modeling career from early childhood defines and troubles her. Her overweening mother’s relentless competitiveness doesn’t lend itself to enduring relationships, as Cecilia laments: “No friends. Cold shoulders when I get covers. Mortification.”

Her genius-level intelligence further alienates her from her peers, and her lifelong nut allergy nearly kills her when she is ten. When her dad fills her young mind with the persecution history of Jewish people, night terrors, shame, and fears result.

The reader lives inside Ceci’s mind and actions during her transition into college as an award-winning artist. Before long, however, her world is complicated when she falls for enigmatic Drew, an aspiring brilliant doctor whose commandeering ways (“He hasn’t asked if I would dine, just presumed, already reserving a table”) clash with her newly won independence. He has his own emotional baggage, also growing up as a child prodigy. While risky, life goes on for the young couple, who later settle, at Drew’s behest, at Stanford University in California—until a mystery caller of Drew’s returns, bent on violence and death-defying catastrophe. The reader remains spell-bound, moving toward an unknown ending while building a close tie to Ceci.