"Beguiling" —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"A delightfully mathematical take on the opposites-attract paradigm." —KIRKUS
"...packs a deceptive, satisfying emotional punch."
—BOOKLIST Starred Review
A BRILLIANT MIND NEEDS A STRONG HEART
Mathematical genius Dr. Meg Brightwood has just completed her life’s work—a proof of a problem so impenetrable it’s nicknamed the Impossible Theorem.
Driven through childhood as a prodigy, Meg has become reclusive and burdened by anxiety. But now everyone wants to get their hands on what she alone possesses—especially her own mathematician father.
Meg opts for a public presentation to dispel any doubt of her authorship, but a panic attack derails her plans. In defeat, she returns to her decaying house and locks away the one and only manuscript of her proof.
Then chance sends her the unlikeliest of allies: Isaac Wells—carpenter, high school dropout, in trouble with the law. And the one love of Meg’s life. Fifteen years ago, they did no more than hold hands. Now adults, they find a tenuous space where they can finally love and be loved for who they are—not who the world expects them to be.
But when Meg goes to retrieve the Impossible Theorem, she finds it missing. Her fight for the achievement of the century will test the limits of her brilliance and the endurance of two vulnerable hearts.
A "witty, quick, and emotionally turbulent tale that will have readers cheering for Johanna well after the last page." —BOOKLIST
"Laugh out loud funny and poignant. I loved it!"—LORI FOSTER, New York Times bestselling author
"Vivid, visceral and sexy." —JEN DEVON, author of Bend Toward the Sun
JOHANNA IS NOT A THIEF—AND SHE'S NOT SORRY
In the back room at an elite gallery party, 40-something soccer mom Johanna Porter stands face to face with her younger self. The girl in the portrait, La Rosa Blanca, is fierce and fearless, and Johanna sees the great painter she almost was before her lover, the powerful artist Nestor Pinedo, torched her career.
When she cuts the million-dollar masterpiece out of its frame, rolls it up and walks out, it’s not a theft. It’s a rescue.
Hiding out in a shack on the Chesapeake Bay with La Rosa Blanca looking on, Johanna tries to paint again, but encounters only the cringe-worthy atrophy of her talent.
When she reluctantly goes sailing with the injured surgeon two houses away, and chemistry flares between the struggling misanthropes, Johanna realizes that to fulfill the promise of her younger self, she’s got to quit playing it safe.
Battling novice-thief paranoia, impostor syndrome and mom guilt, she can stay one step ahead of the law. But it will take an act of desperation to become the woman La Rosa Blanca was meant to be.
