Ivy

I just finished reading the book Ivy by Julie Hearn. Its a story set around the 1800s in Europe. It is about a young girl with abnormally red hair. She is living in an impoverished family that has lied and cheated its way for every ounce of bread that they can afford. Because of a regularly used drug from her childhood, that caused drowsiness called laudanum, she is addicted to it as a young adult. She becomes dependent on it to get through the day. Soon her fire colored hair attracts an unwanted guest. He is a painter named Oscar Frosdick who is trying to make it big as a painter but needs the right "stunner" to do that. Ivy is forced into a modeling job with Oscar by her family who desperately want all the money they can get, even if Ivy doesn’t want to. She soon discovers that doing this was a possibly fatal mistake, because Oscar has an extremely jealous mother who hates Ivy for being the object of Oscar’s paintings. She will try by any means to do away with Ivy. But before Ivy can worry about that can she throw off her deadly addiction to laudanum. This was a really interesting book and I liked it a lot!