Ivy Rises

<p>Ivy Marston was raised to pass every test-etiquette scholarship obedience. She knows how to occupy a room without taking up space how to smile without inviting questions how to make a life that looks correct from a distance. Then two things arrive at once: art and a woman who sees her.</p><p>In a studio that smells of linseed and possibility Ivy swaps footnotes for brushstrokes and learns the hard generous work of attention. A loaf of bread becomes a study in light. A windowsill becomes a weather report. A laugh-her own-escapes unedited. With Lena the baker whose hands translate care into something edible Ivy tastes a future that isn't curated for her but chosen by her.</p><p>When the bakery closes for renovation and Lena disappears into another zip code Ivy faces a quieter decision: does love evaporate with distance or change jobs? The answer unfolds in small exact acts-moving a painting toward truth with one violet stroke taping a postcard to the wall selecting Studio Art on a form that once read Pre-Law. What she feels for Lena persists as attention and blessing not ache. What she claims for herself becomes a life built from practice not performance.</p><p>Ivy Rises is a tender interior romance about choosing what fits when tradition asks you to wear something smaller. It is also a novel of craft-of how looking closely remakes a person. With spare lyricism and emotional precision Iris Hartley charts a woman's passage from inheritance to authorship from borrowed poise to honest presence.</p><p>Readers who love slow-burn intimacy art-room atmospheres and queer love that's as much sanctuary as spark will find a home in these pages. Ivy's story is not thunderous. It's truer than that. It's the sound of a life clicking into place.</p>