Review: Aix Marks The Spot by Sarah Anderson

Thanks to Netgalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Publications date: June 16th 2020

Publisher: Seabreeze Books

Pages: 380

Jamie has been dreaming of this summer forever: of road trips and intensive art camps, of meeting cute boys with her best friend Jazz. What she didn’t count on was the car accident.

Exiled away from her family as her mother slowly learns to walk again, Jamie is sent to Provence and trapped in an isolated home with the French grandmother she has never met, the guilt of having almost killed her parents, and no Wi-Fi. Enough to drive a girl mad. That is, until, she finds an old letter from her father, the starting point in a treasure hunt that spans across cities and time itself. Somehow, she knows that the treasure is the key to putting her shattered family back together and that whatever lies at the end has the power to fix everything.

Armed only with a high-school-level of French and a map of train lines, she must enlist the aid of Valentin, a handsome local who’s willing to translate. To save her family, she has castle ruins to find and sea cliffs to climb; falling for her translator wasn’t part of her plan… 

After living in France for several years, and experiencing the whole wildly out of water experience of moving to a country where you cannot for the life of you get the words you know to come out in a coherent fashion, I am always keen to find books that distil that experience out onto the page. And this one does, but also doesn’t. It’s a curious mix.

Good things first: I really loved exploring the south of France. There were places that I’ve been to before and I shrieked delightedly at my husband that they were visiting Cassis. And places that I’ve never experienced that I immediately added to the itinerary or our next trip. It made me feel homesick for excellent coffee and pastries and the food. It transported me straight into the middle of a hot French summer, where you can barely think beyond the sound of the cicadas. 

However (you knew it was coming, didn’t you) I just couldn’t connect with Jamie. Whilst I completely empathised with the fish out of water experience, and struggling to keep up in a country where you aren’t fluent, I found her to be incredibly unlikable and frustrating. She is convinced that she’s been exiled to France because her parents hate her, and yet the few interactions she has with them early on do nothing to provide a basis for that. She struggles with the language yet makes zero effort to learn. She finds other tourists with their loud, obnoxious English conversations to be mortifying, yet can’t seem to understand that she is exactly the same.

It’s a light and quick read, and one that I enjoyed up to a point. But it never really finds its feet because it is weighed down by how frustrating I found Jamie. She wasn’t someone I wanted to spend time with - half the time I just wanted to shake her. However, as a book that catapults you right back into the heat of a summer in France it was a good escape.

Review: The Confectioner's Tale by Laura Madeleine

Publication Date: May 21^st 2015
Publisher: Random House UK, Transworld Publishers
Length: 336 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

What secrets are hiding in the heart of Paris?
At the famous Patisserie Clermont in Paris, 1909, a chance encounter with the owner's daughter has given one young man a glimpse into a life he never knew existed: of sweet cream and melted chocolate, golden caramel and powdered sugar, of pastry light as air.
But it is not just the art of confectionery that holds him captive, and soon a forbidden love affair begins.
Almost eighty years later, an academic discovers a hidden photograph of her grandfather as a young man with two people she has never seen before. Scrawled on the back of the picture are the words 'Forgive me'. Unable to resist the mystery behind it, she begins to unravel the story of two star-crossed lovers and one irrevocable betrayal.

Living in France has made me want to read more books set over here – I want to immerse myself in as much of the country and culture as I can and that means involving it in my reading as well. And truthfully the books I’ve read so far have been fantastic. I’ve loved exploring different parts of the country and different time periods when I delve into a new book – which was what made me pick up this one. I mean the fact that it is set in a patisserie alone was enough to tempt me, the cakes that come out of some patisseries are incredible, they are works of art. So I was curious (and mildly hungry) when starting this one.

The story is split over two timelines, Gui’s in 1910 and Petra’s in 1988. I’m always a little wary of split timeline narratives as one narrative invariably ends up suffering. Sadly this was true for this novel, which knocked it down from five stars to four as, whilst Petra’s narrative was interesting it was very slow and dragged from the pacing and intrigue contained in Gui’s narrative. I wanted to be in Gui’s world, to find out what would happen and to spend more time in the patisserie, so it was always frustrating to be dragged back to Petra’s story where nothing much seemed to happen and she spent a vast amount of time not really accomplishing anything. Her timeline does pick up the pace to match the frenetic conclusion to Gui’s and the final part of the novel was much tighter and worked well as a whole. However the lack of real conclusion to a couple of Petra’s narrative threads left me feeling a little frustrated.

There wasn’t a huge amount of depth to the secondary characters and at times even with the primary characters. It felt as though I were skating along the ideas and possibilities of the book without ever being allowed to grasp at the depths of emotions it could contain. However rather than having a huge negative impact on my feeling during reading, it kind of works. It reads like a movie, you can smell and taste and feel everything and it is so deliciously descriptive in its surrounding, that the lack of real emotional depth of the characters doesn’t prove to be too much of a setback. What did frustrate me though was how childlike Gui proved to be at points. Whilst the majority of the novel was spent with him as an intriguing and fascinating character and our insight into this world, there were moments where he regressed and became childishly quick to anger and misunderstand. Sadly that diminished my love and respect for him as a romantic lead, but luckily these moments were relatively rare and didn’t impact my overall feelings on the novel too hard.

These frustrations and gripes aside, I adored this novel. It was a wonderful story that revealed little pieces of the whole in such a tantalising way that you were constantly kept guessing and wondering how the story would resolve. It was a wonderful mix of intrigue, race against time, love and historical novel and it brought all the threads together seamlessly. The language is rich and evocative and I could visualize the patisserie and the pastries Gui and the other chefs were creating so vividly that it was almost cinematic at moments. It’s a wonderful novel, full of little delights and sadnesses that left me filled with bittersweet contentment and a longing for Paris and pastries. Whilst it wasn’t a outstanding favourite it will definitely be a novel I return to and fall back into the magic of Paris that Laura Madeleine has created. Fans of Daisy Goodwin’s historical novels will love this.

Review: Liberty's Fire by Lydia Syson

Publication Date: May 7^th 2015
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Length: 348 pages

Huge thanks to Hot Key Books for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Paris, 1871. Four young people will rewrite their destinies. Paris is in revolt. After months of siege at the hands of the Prussians, a wind of change is blowing through the city, bringing with it murmurs of a new revolution. Alone and poverty-stricken, sixteen-year-old Zephyrine is quickly lured in by the ideals of the city's radical new government, and she finds herself swept away by its promises of freedom, hope, equality and rights for women. But she is about to fall in love for a second time, following a fateful encounter with a young violinist. Anatole's passion for his music is soon swiftly matched only by his passion for this fierce and magnificent girl. He comes to believe in Zephyrine's new politics - but his friends are not so sure. Opera-singer Marie and photographer Jules have desires of their own, and the harsh reality of life under the Commune is not quite as enticing for them as it seems to be for Anatole and Zephyrine. And when the violent reality of revolution comes crashing down at all their feet, can they face the danger together - or will they be forced to choose where their hearts really lie?

Ever since I moved to France I have been reading more books set in France. It’s such a wonderful step away from the usual UK and US YA fiction we see so much of, and I’ve been loving seeing so much more of the culture and history I’ve been thrust into. The history is something that particularly fascinates me as my knowledge of French History is woefully inadequate and I’m working hard to try and rectify it. So over the last few weeks I have slipped into 1910 (‘The Confectioner’s Wife’ by Laura Madeleine) and 1814 (‘A School for Unusual Girls by Kathleen Baldwin’) so I had a little idea of what might be happening in 1871 but it was incredible to step into ‘Liberty’s Fire’ and have Lydia Syson bring this fascinating period to roaring life.

Syson offers four distinct views into the events of the novel from four very different backgrounds. Jules the American photographer who has no lack of money and has been able to survive the events with very little issue. Anatole his friend, a boy from the country recently moved to Paris who plays violin for the theatre. Zephyrine, whose Grandmother passes away at the start and is at the lowest rung of the ladder – destitute and desperate for the equality the commune can provide her with she throws herself into it without a backward glance, taking Anatole with her. And Marie, an opera singer in the same company as Anatole. Her brother is in the French army and she doesn’t understand or embrace the idea of the commune, in fact she appears downright terrified of it for the most part. Each of these characters with their entangled stories and relationships offer insights into every aspect of the revolution and the commune created in Paris. You see it from both sides, those for and against. Those with money and a way to live and those with nothing who are desperate for some equality. I loved seeing how each of them reacted to the events that unfold, and how they each scramble to try and survive.

The events of this period are absolutely devastating, and Syson has captured that feeling of jubilation followed by horror and devastation perfectly. It is brutal and horrific at points, painted with such vividness with Syson’s beautiful prose. I felt as if I were living it myself, shown these tangled threads of stories and following each character through their struggles. It was heartbreaking but also uplifting and Syson perfectly combines her research and historical pin points so that you come away knowing more about these three months – a period of history I was sadly ignorant of before. But it isn’t just a history lesson, she weaves a compelling tale of love and friendship and survival with a wonderful cast of characters.

I only had two issues with the story. The first being the pacing. Whilst I loved all the details and the measured pace so that we really got to know the characters and their relationships with one another, the pacing did become a little slow at points, almost to the point where I wondered if there would actually be a climax. It didn’t feel so much like a slow build to a pinnacle of tension where everything exploded, it felt more like a meandering build which worked in some places and frustrated me in others. However when events finally come to a head it is action packed, tense and utterly gripping and enthralling. I could not put the book down until I had learned what had happened to each of the characters.

My second problem was with the relationship. I wasn’t sold on the relationship between Anatole and Zephryine. It was very sudden and I didn’t connect with it in the same way as I did with the relationship between Anatole and Jules. As a result I became more invested in their side moments than the majority of the scenes that occurred between Anatole and Zephryine.

However these were only minor quibbles in a truly extraordinary book. Syson brings this pivotal moment of French history into glorious life and explores it from four unique view-points and I loved these characters and their stories as much as I loved finding out more about the history of France. Syson sets up a vivid peek into this world and then builds into a staggering conclusion with a truly incredible tale.