Rejected by her family for her bisexuality, graphic artist Margot DuPont yearns for a life with no fences, no limits, and no family ties. Between college, work at Book Nirvana, and an art competition, she barely has time for her part-time girlfriend much less a flirtation with her competitor.Dumped into the foster system at a young age, ceramics artist Elmer Byrne craves a big, loving family of … of the heart. His artist family almost fills that need, but something is missing…until Margot. But when he offers his heart, her thorny defenses shatter him.Thrown together in an art competition that could jump-start one artist’s career, but not both, their irresistible attraction forces them to reconsider the meaning of success.
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Omg!!! What a phenomenal story!! Margot is torn between to lovers. Yes like the song. Choosing isnt easy because one wants her to be her only and the other wants her and to continue playing the field. Margo is a graphic designer trying to get her foot in the door. Elmer a hunky with a ginger beard you makes pottery is also trying to get his foot in the door. The two have a love story that’s as realistic as they come. This story was so much better than I initially thought. I highly recommend it!!!
I recieved an ARC in exchange for a honest review
Sadira Stone’s “Love, Art, and Other Obstacles” is a funky tale in the world of artists. As a band geek and math nerd, it was so fun to experience the life of creatives beyond what I see at art festivals. The wide range of artists and how they make ends meet was fascinating. This book is the third in the series about Nirvana Books shop, but I didn’t read the first two installments before reading this book – and I wasn’t missing a thing. Stone masterfully builds her world in a way that I was caught up to speed without noticing. I was too engrossed in the world of art grants, side hustles, and creativity.
At the heart of the story is Margot who may look like Tinkerbell, but her personality is ten feet tall. I love a prickly heroine who asserts her boundaries, and no one is limiting Margot’s dreams. Margot is blossoming in the world of graphic design but at a snail’s pace. Her money troubles would be foremost in her mind if she weren’t in a long-distance relationship with the evil Darcy. Margot doesn’t see her as evil, but Darcy is the type of villain who wormed her way under my skin. Margot has too many choices: monogamy, polyamory, Darcy, Elmer. What’s a modern bisexual to do?
I’m usually not a fan of the cinnamon roll love interest, but Elmer joined my book boyfriend list. Wow. The bearded ginger makes ceramic beer steins, works in a brewery, and teaches little kids ceramics as a volunteer Add a hefty amount of steam and SWOON! He’s the nice guy with a masculine strong side that is so hard to convey, and Sadira Stone nails him.
Overall, I highly recommend this funky, modern love story to anyone curious about life behind-the-canvas, swooning over cinnamon roll heroes, or ready to contemplate the romantic complications of bisexuality.
Another great book by the amazing Sadira Stone! Absolutely loved this book and these characters. Enjoyed the connection, community, and world building created by the author. The story jumped off the pages and came to life for me. Loved it!
Delightful characters. Energetic plot. Good friends. Laughs and tears. Hot sex. The heroine is torn between wanting her independence and allowing someone to love her. He is smitten by the petite woman with the feisty attitude. Throw in an art competition between them and fireworks fly and love blossoms.
She’s a free spirit. He’s a one-woman man.
Artists Margot DuPont and Elmer Byrne struggle to get by. Not only to get their work noticed but simple daily survival often feels like an enormous mountain to be climbed. One might ask, why not give up? Try something else? Work at the local fast food joint to pay the bills?
Because art fills their souls. It fulfills them.
Having survived dysfunction and abuse on the home fronts, Margot and Elmer both look to the families of their hearts for support and guidance. One important part of those families is Maxie, a surrogate grandmother, who encourages each to apply for a grant through a local foundation. Thrown together—literally and figuratively—they compete on several levels, personal and professional. In the end each wins what they desire the most—and in most deserving fashions.
As with her other stories, Sadira Stone again offers her fans rich, multi-layered characters—either protagonists or antagonists. And she does it in such an effortless manner when the final denouement hits the page, we stood up and shouted “Yes!” If you like detailed, complicated romances, with a lot of heat, this is the book for you.
On a scale of 1-5, Love, Art and Other Obstacles deserves a 6.
Kat Henry Doran, Wild Women Reviews
Let’s start with this book’s cover. It is perfect in its depiction of the main protagonists of Book 3 in the Book Nirvana series, Margot & Elmer. If you haven’t read the other books in the series, you should go back and read them in order just to get to know everyone else, especially Maxie, and absorb the full amazingness of each story. But in whichever order you read them, you won’t be disappointed.
Ms. Stone has done it again. This is a warm, angsty human story that pulls you right into the Book Nirvana neighborhood and the creative Eugene, Oregon art scene. Each character is so well drawn reading this story is almost like watching a movie. Except its better than a movie with its spot on descriptions, in real life dialogue and inner thoughts of the main couple, Margot & Elmer. Because Ms. Stone is that gifted. This is a romance and a freakin’ steamy one at that, but Love, Art, and Other Obstacles is so much more.
Margot is an independent spirit. Shunned by her family for her bisexuality, she’s living on a dime trying to graduate college and get her Doc Martened foot into the graphic art world.
Elmer is a potter, a gruff, sweet, flirty, ginger beast also working hard at multiple gigs, living with a group of young artists in the neighborhood Ms. Stone has made so real you’ll wish you could place your order for some takeout Thai food and craft beer while you read.
The push pull of these lovers as they compete for the same art prize while they come together as a couple within their larger community of friends— young, older and everything in between, was something realistic, romantic and just beautiful to behold. The demonic, manipulative Darcy was ultimately a tragic figure but the pain she inflicted on a confused though ultimately stronger for it, Margot was unforgivable.
What can I say but I didn’t want this story to end and I don’t want this series to end?
Highly recommend.
This is book three in The Book Nirvana series and it’s Margot and Elmer’s story. I really enjoyed this book This book will put your emotions through a roller coaster ride. I love Elmer. He’s a shameless flirt but a loveable teddy bear who is always willing to help his friends and family out. Margot frustrated me to no end. There were a few times where I really wanted to slap her silly but, in the end, I was happy with the way everything was tied up in the book.
Elmer is a flirt and if you’ve read book two, you’ll know that because he flirted with Laurel every chance he got. Now he’s noticed Margot but after some time spent around her, he knows she’s different. Margot keeps telling herself that she doesn’t need a relationship. That her long-distance thing with her kind of girlfriend Darcy is all she needs. She hooks up with Elmer and things explode. What she was thinking was just going to be a good time ended being so much more and it scared her. What they have is like fireworks and Elmer is hoping that Margot will choose him but Darcy her sometimes girlfriend has poisoned Margot’s mind to Elmer and relationships in general. Darcy is a perfect example of what a toxic person is. She is a horrible manipulative person. To top things off Margot and Elmer are competing against each other in an art contest. Will Margot wise up to Darcy’s manipulative ways? Will Elmer and Margot’s relationship survive the competition?
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Love, Art and Other Obstacles is the third in the Through the Red Door romance series. I have read the second, Runaway Love Story and enjoyed it as well. The series is connected by their setting of Eugene, Oregon, and by their cast of characters, most notably, Maxie, a vibrant ninety-year-old woman who has mentored many of the artists in the Eugene. Love, Art and Other Obstacles follows Margot and Elmer, two young artists juggling multiple jobs and financial straits trying to support themselves in order to create their art. They have an incomparable attraction to each other and have a lot in common. Both people suffered difficult childhoods, and, after rejection by their birth parents, and transplanted themselves to Eugene. Heterosexual Elmer, a potter, is flirty and generous with his heart and has formed a “family” of friends he shares a house with. Bisexual Margot, a computer graphic artist, is stubborn and independent, intent on doing things her own way without help from anyone. To avoid getting tied down, she is in an open relationship with another woman, Darcy, and soon finds herself torn between her two lovers.
This book, being a romance, is heavy on the romance. But as in Runaway Love Story, there are themes that go beyond a typical romance. The situations are realistic. There are no perfect knights in shining armor or peerless princesses. Again, Stone’s use of every day situations like brings a deep humanity to this novel that is usually lacking in romance, especially one this hot! I’d have read it in one sitting except the battery of my Kindle died at 2:30 a.m.
A Very Different Love Triangle
I was drawn to this book and series in part because it takes place in Eugene, Oregon. I am an Oregonian myself, and I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for any book that takes place in my state. I’ve been to Eugene several times, and through it more often than that, and I certainly find myself wondering if it has a thriving artistic community as represented in this book. The author has done an amazing job creating a fantastic, quirky cast of artistic characters. She’s made this community seem vibrant and alive—and very real. The story is a unique spin on a love triangle. The heroine is bisexual and currently in a very loose, open lesbian relationship when she becomes attracted to a male competitor in an art competition that could really help her artistic career and provide some very needed money. I loved the hero in this book. He embodies the best traits of an artist: open, understanding, and dedicated to his art and his friends. As a romantic hero, he’s a total sweetheart, the kind you love to see ultimately get the girl.
SPOILER
What I didn’t like about the book is that the lesbian sometimes girlfriend is made to be the villain of the piece. I love the idea of a bisexual love triangle as I don’t think I’ve ever read that in romantic fiction, but I don’t like the heroine’s female lover being “the bad guy.”
END SPOILER
All in all, I found this to be a fun and different contemporary romance.
4.5 rounded down to 4
I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.
This is my first Sadira Stone book but it won’t be my last. I was gripped and couldn’t stop reading. This is book three in the series but stands alone just fine, though if you want to meet Clair, Laurel and a few others reading the first two books would help. I wasn’t lost at all and the story was great.
Margot Is bisexual and seeing a friend Darcy that lives in Berkely. They only get to see each other on occasion and have an open relationship though Margot stays so busy she hasn’t been seeing anyone else. She is trying to get her foot in the door as a graphic designer, finish school, and work to pay bills. She works in Clair’s bookstore and Laurel her friend suggests she volunteer at the Rainbow center a place for artistic children with special needs. She meets Elmer a sexy, hunky ginger bearded man with a big heart. Sparks fly but they are both competing for a big prize in an art contest.
At first, I got a little confused with Margot and Darcy in a relationship and we got quite a bit of explicit detail. I thought “am I reading a FF story? The blurb showed a man. “(I have no problem with FF relationships, so it didn’t bother me…love is love) Then I met Elmer and fell in love. I loved the characters…all of them. They are so quirky, well-developed and relatable. The storyline is intriguing, there are a couple of subplots and the romantic love triangle is amazing (nope no ménage or threesome)
This is way up there on one of the best stories I have read this year so far and I plan to go back and read the other two books in this series soon.)
Oh, did I mention cute kids!
Not a book I would have normally read before. The cover intrigued me. Margot is a bisexual, young graphic artist, still in college. She was disowned for the most part from her religious family. Margot ended a dysfunctional relationship with Darcy, who moved to CA. The ex-contacts her to get her jollies over FaceTime but says their not a couple. Then feeds her crap that men are then evil downfall of women. Meanwhile, Darcy is doing both in CA. When Margot meets Elmer another artist through an elderly friend like a grandma she’s not interested. But when Maxie passes Elmer is the one comforting her while Darcy ghosts her over a week. When Darcy figures out Elmer and she have been on a few dates all of a sudden guess who can visit now? Part of me wanted a little more exciting ending but for a girl whose had no family this was perfect.