Paris-born Vivienne Lebrun longs for a different life. One where she doesn’t attend college three thousand miles away from her family in New York City. A life where she is sophisticated and has kissed many men, both standing up and sitting down, like the lovers in Rodin’s sculpture. In that life, she would skip her final year of school and start writing books and working at a New York bakery. And her French mother wouldn’t (possibly, maybe) be dealing with the return of cancer.

In her real life, all Vivienne can do is obsessively catalog her longings in her journal.

But as a new semester begins, she enrolls in a poetry class taught by Peter Breznik, a handsome Yugoslavian graduate instructor. In a heartbeat, she’s taken by his spell-casting blue eyes, his almost smile, and his romantical...

Paris-born Vivienne Lebrun longs for a different life. One where she doesn’t attend college three thousand miles away from her family in New York City. A life where she is sophisticated and has kissed many men, both standing up and sitting down, like the lovers in Rodin’s sculpture. In that life, she would skip her final year of school and start writing books and working at a New York bakery. And her French mother wouldn’t (possibly, maybe) be dealing with the return of cancer.

In her real life, all Vivienne can do is obsessively catalog her longings in her journal.

But as a new semester begins, she enrolls in a poetry class taught by Peter Breznik, a handsome Yugoslavian graduate instructor. In a heartbeat, she’s taken by his spell-casting blue eyes, his almost smile, and his romantical...