The object of Blanca’s affection just so happens to be one of the most notable writers of the Romantic Era, George Sands, who is accompanied by her two children and her lover Frédéric Chopin. The premise - even the summarized version on the back cover -is intricate and somewhat nonsensical: A 14-year-old 15th century ghost, Blanca, haunts an abandoned monastery on the tiny Spanish island of Mallorca and, 400 years after her death, falls in love with one of the monastery’s living residents. The biggest issue with this book is that it simply tries to do too much at once. The concept is compelling but would have been better suited for a short story. The plot somehow both meanders and stagnates, the characters have little development, the adolescence of the narrator makes the narrative feel juvenile, and the historical component reads like a quasi-forgotten interlude. The historical fiction lesbian romance ghost story bites off more than it can chew and ends up failing to do anything successfully. After several successful short stories and memoirs, Stevens’s’ novel definitely makes a splash - or tries to at least.

Nell Stevens’s debut novel “Briefly, A Delicious Life” is undeniably imaginative, but a cornucopia of creativity cannot make up for several large-scale drawbacks.

Briefly a delicious life nell stevens