Review: Picture This

Picture This by Tobsha Learner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first Tobsha Learner book and I’m not one hundred percent sure how I feel about it. It was an interesting read, yes, although it wasn’t at all what I had been expecting.

A part of me had been expecting a real thriller – the edge of your seat kind, where to put the book down for a single moment is the equivalent of cutting off a limb. A part of me had been expecting erotica – I wasn’t sure of what variety, but I was expecting there to be a lot of skin-on-skin moments throughout. A very small part of me had been expecting a low-key historical fiction – a look at the not too distant past, going back a mere decade. Whilst it had aspects of all of these parts, it was never quite enough of any of them for me to say ‘yes, that is how I will label this book’. There’s enough to keep you interested in the book, yet I was never really pulled in to the degree that I had hoped to be by any of the components I’d been expecting.

In terms of the thriller aspect, there were many nods to the genre. We have a murder; we have forgery; we have attempts at ending lives; we have people digging to find out the truth of everything that had happened. Each of these aspects were linked together really well, although I feel that no single aspect was really explored to quite the degree I had hoped it would. What I had wanted was real drama, real action. What we were given is an air of mystique that never quite develops to the full explosive potential.

In terms of the erotica, it wasn’t quite what I had expected. I feel as though the description of the book being ‘erotically charged’ describes it better than a simple label of erotica. Whilst there were erotic scenes, they did not dominate the story. When they did appear, they were well done. It was more of a twisted romance, filled with all kinds of complications.

I think, for me, what stopped me from truly being pulled into either aspect of the storyline was all the details pertaining to the art world. I love it when books are accurate, and it was clear the author had done her research and knew what she was talking about. However, I feel as though more attention was given to what was going on in the art world than the other aspects of the story, meaning I wasn’t as pulled in by the other aspects of the story. In other words, I was distracted by the art world. It was wonderfully done, and I could imagine what was going on, yet it seemed to be given much more focus than any other aspect of the story (be it the romance, the thrilling events, or the complexities of the characters).

In no way am I saying I did not enjoy this one – it simply wasn’t what I had hoped it would be. It was interesting, it allowed me to find out a lot about the art world, but it didn’t quite satisfy me in the way I had hoped it would. If nothing else, it has left me interested to see what else the author has to offer – after all, I enjoyed her way of storytelling, I just didn’t enjoy the story quite as much as I had hoped I would.

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