Sunday Salon: Spell the Month in Books - July

Reviews From the Stacks

For 2025 I have decided to have a go at Spell the Month in Books which is hosted at Reviews From the Stacks. The link party opens on the first Saturday of the month, but I won't be posting until after that as I already have other things scheduled every Saturday and for the first two Sundays of the month. I will be sharing this post with Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz.

The idea is that you use the title of books to spell the month name. The theme  for July is set in a fantasy world or fictional place! Given that I am participating in Paris in July, all of these books have a French connection. Now I am not suggesting that France is fictional, but I am always dreaming of visiting it so that makes it my fantasy right?

We won't talk about the fact that I had to cheat a little bit for the J and the Y. Shhhh!

A Wish Upon Jasmine by Laura Florand - A few years ago now I had a massive reading slump that lasted a good couple of years. I think one year I only read about 10 books. Laura Florand was one of the few authors I was still reading. I really enjoyed all of her books which combined France and chocolate and perfume! This book is the second book in the La Vie en Roses series. I wish she was still writing now. 

Under a Riviera Moon by Helen McGinn - I read this book earlier this year. It was the first I had read by this author who is a wine expert and appears on British TV. (my review)

Lunch in Paris: A Delicious Love Story, with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard - It's hard to believe I read this book 14 years ago now, but it's true. I originally posted about this book and linked it up to Paris in July back in 2011. This is the story of a woman whom move to France for love, the fabulous food she ate and the challenges that she faced. I still love this cover. (my review)

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes - This is a dual timeline where the historical time frame is WWI France (my review)

August's theme is Written by your favorite author(s). Finding two U books is going to be very challenging I think!

Will you be joining us?

Top Ten Tuesday - Horses

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Covers with [Item] on the Cover (You choose the item! It can be anything at all.)

Today is a public holiday here in Melbourne for the Melbourne Cup. Yes, we have a public holiday for a horse race. Therefore, my post this week is all about horses! I actually started this post a few years ago and then came up with other posts on the dates closest to Melbourne Cup day, but this year everything aligned and it was time to roll it out.

The Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis - I read this in my pre-blogging days, which is a very long time ago indeed!

The Water Horse by Julia Gregson - This book tells the story of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson - I read this in pre-blogging days as well and don't remember much about it!

The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley - Having recently visited a Roman archeological site, I feel like Ishould maybe revisit this book, which is all about the lost Roman Legion. (My review)

The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons - This book is actually named for a statue of horse in St Peterburg but it still counts for this topic

The Horse Dancer by Jojo Moyes - I haven't read this book but I have read others by her..

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy - I have owned this book for 18 months or so, but I still haven't read it.

Horse by Geraldine Brooks - I haven't read this one either, but I have seen her speak and read a few of her books.

The Valley of the Horses by Jean Auel - Another pre blogging read. 

Foals Bread by Gillian Mears - I really didn't like this book but it definitely fits the theme.

So there are ten books that feature horses in the title, or 9 books with a picture of a horse on the cover

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Most Anticipated Books Being Released in the First Half of 2023

Happy Place by Emily Henry -  April.

Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt by Lucinda Riley and Harry Whittaker - May

The War Nurses by Anthea Hodgson - April

The Homecoming by Alison Stuart - January

Homecoming by Kate Morton - April

Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See - June

Snowy Mountains Promise by Alissa Callen - February

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune- April

Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes - February

The King's Jewel by Elizabeth Chadwick - April

April is looking like a big month for new releases! Are you looking forward to any of these?

Top Ten Tuesday: Fancy fonts

 

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This 

week the theme is

Typographic Book Covers (Book covers with a design that is all or mostly all words. You can also choose to do books with nice typography if that’s easier!) (Submitted by Mareli @ Elza Reads)


It is interesting when you look at trends in covers. If we look at historical romance as an example. Not too long ago most covers were clinch covers with women in gorgeous dresses but these days it isn't as standard. Now, there are font covers or cartoonny in amongst the big dresses.


I haven't focussed on just one genre, but here is my Top Ten Tuesday post featuring typographic book covers.

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich - The reality is that you could have picked any one of the Stephanie Plum books as they are pretty much all typographic covers!

Love Stories by Trent Dalton - Given that this is a selection of very short stories, this cover makes sense as there isn't one single story to tell

Someone I Used to Know by Paige Toon - Plenty of rom-coms have wordy covers!

The Year the Maps Changed by Danielle Binks - This cover is very eye catching.

The Great Passage by Shion Miura - This book is all about the words, inside and out!



The People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry - All of Emily Henry's covers have been wordy so far.

Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston - Such a fun cover and book!

Normal People by Sally Rooney - Quite a few of the covers for this book have bold typography on the cover.

Don't You Forget About Me - Another author who has a lot of these style of covers.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes - This cover does not convey the emotional nature of this book at all!

Do you like typographic covers?

Six Degrees of Separation: What Are You Going Through to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

 Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.  I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz. 

The starting point for this month is a book called What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez. I found this a tough book to start with. I am also realising that so often my go to books for this meme are the same ones! I think I have avoided that this time, but only just. And there's no guarantee that it won't happen in future!

What You Are Going Through appears to have a number of themes, but one of them is about euthanasia which brings me to my first book which is Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.

After the death of a loved one, what follow is grief. Grief is a central theme of The Secret of Snow by Viola Shipman which I read this week.

There was a lot of snow in The Secret of Snow and the word snow is what made me choose In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl. I loved this book when I read it a few years ago. It is set in WWI France.

Also partially set in WWI is Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole, and you can't do a connections about an epistolary book set during war without then linking to the next book. You just can't!

That right! The next book is The GuernseyLiterary and Potato Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows.

From there, the final choice is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, part of the Flavia de Luce mystery series.

Next month's starting book is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, and I already have two ideas of what my first links might be.

Six Degrees of Separation: Normal People to The Ship of Brides

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.  I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

I haven't always read the books that we start off with but I did just finish listen to Normal People this week which is the starting book for this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation. I think I got it either as a freebie or cheap daily deal from Audible a while ago. When I finished my last audiobook I looked at the books I had available in my account. There was one that was more than 32 hours, and a couple of others that were more than 25 hours, and I just wasn't ready to commit to an audiobook that long. At just under 8 hours, Normal People was an ideal choice. and the narration by Aiofe McMahon was really good.

The reason I specifically mentioned Aiofe McMahon as the narrator is that she was also the narrator for The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan, which was the audiobook that I finished before Normal People. The Good Turn is a very different book to Normal People so it was a bit of a shock to hear the same narrator but you get used to it pretty quickly. I have had that happen to me before too! The Good Turn was an excellent entry in the Cormac Reilly series, and I can't wait to read more.

Another Irish really good crime series is Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad.  I read the early books in this series years ago (before it was even really considered a series. I do have a couple of books left to read at some point too. The first book of this series is In the Woods.

Woods play an important role in many books, and particularly in fairy tales and fantasy. For my next book I have chosen Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I love this book but it is one of the few examples where the movie is better than the book - marginally - mainly thanks to Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare!

I can't really remember if the movie of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was better than the book but it was enjoyable. Good job then that isn't the link that I am using. Rather it is the word star that is the link. I did a conversational review about this book and the first question I asked was Did you cry?  to which my answer was yet.

However, it wasn't ugly, sobbing crying which is what I have felt all three times I have read Me Before You by Jojo Moyes which is my next choice. This book ripped my heart out, stomped on it a couple of times and then stuffed it back in upside down. There are two other books in this series which are good but didn't get me in the same way. As an aside, if you are a fan of the Lou Clark trilogy which this is the first book for, check out the COVID-10/Isolation short story which you can read here.

I have loved several of Jojo Moyes' books so I thought that I would make the last choice for this month the first book I read by her, The Ship of Brides. The book is about four Australian war brides who board a ship to England to meet up with their husbands heading into a life full of unknowns. I can't believe I read this book more than 13 years ago (way before the current historical fiction fascination for WWII kicked in) and I still think about it some times. Our four brides were normal people who uprooted their whole lives in the name of love.

The starting point for next month is What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt which I haven't heard of before let alone read. 

Best books of the 2010s

Whilst I have not been reading anywhere near as much in the last half of the decade I was reading quite a lot for the rest of the time and while I haven't been blogging very well for a long time, I did still maintain my Excel spreadsheet which lists all the books I have read. I can't imagine stopping now given that I have actually been maintaining it since 2004!

A quick look at the spreadsheet indicates that in the 2010s I read 34 books that I graded as 5/5 reads.  When I look back now some of those gradings stand up better than others in that I remember reading them and still get warm and fuzzies when I think about those books. Others not so much.

In terms of stand out reads though, there are two books which I read and reread and gave 5/5 grades both times, which is unusual. In both cases, I have read the final linked books in 2019. In the case of The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta.  I listened to it again this year (for the fourth time) in anticipation of the release of  the next book in the series, The Place on Dalhousie. I guess it isn't a series as such, but it does feature all the same characters at different points in their lives. I also loved On the Jellicoe Road by this author

The other book that I read multiple times and graded as 5/5 each time was Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. I just finished reading the latest/final book in that series, Still Me, just a few days ago while I was on a plane. The other book I loved by this author was The Last Letter from Your Lover

In terms of authors,  there are several who appeared more than once on my list of 5/5 reads. As  I mentioned both of the above authors were there with more than one book but there were also:

Elizabeth Chadwick with Lady of the English and To Defy a King

Sara Donati with Into the Wilderness and The Endless Forest, the first and last books in the Into the Wilderness series.

Susanna Kearsley with The Firebird, The Rose Garden and The Shadowy Horses.

For fun, I thought I would mention that my first 5/5 read for the decade was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and the last one was The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary.

In addition to Melina Marchetta, the other Australian authors on the list were John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began),  Kimberley Freeman (Lighthouse Bay), Mary-Rose MacColl (In Falling Snow) and Hannah Richell (The Peacock Summer).

I wonder what my first 5/5 read will be this year/decade?

Sunday Salon: Best of 2012

And so....it is the end of another year. It doesn't really seem all that possible that a whole year has gone by, but I think I say that most years and time still keeps rolling along.

The end of the year means not only looking forward to the new year but also looking back to the year that has just gone, so today I will look back to the books that I loved so much this year that I gave them a rare grading of 5/5. Over the next few days I will take a look at my reading stats and then look forward to my reading resolutions for 2013.

Last year, Jojo Moyes appeared on my best of list with her book Last Letter from Your Lover. This year, I have read two more of her books and while I really liked The Girl You Left Behind, it is Me Before You that I really, really loved!

I love that this is the kind of book that you literally laugh and cry at. It deals with a big issue but does it with so much heart and dignity. Highly recommend this book.

You can read the discussion I had with Bree from All the Books I Can Read about Me before You. The first half is here and then I have the second half of the conversation here.

The other book I rated as a 5/5 read was

I have long heard how fabulous this book was, and finally this year I got to read it. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to love it anywhere near as much as I did because I am a bit Tudored out and it is a huge book but once I started it I was surprised at how fresh it felt to be reading it even though I know Queen Elizabeth I's story pretty well.

I have a lot of books that I rated at 4.5/5, far too many to list so overall it was a pretty good year reading wise!

Currently Reading

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister, The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley and listening to Addition by Toni Jordan.

Next up

Falcons of Montabard by Elizabeth Chadwick and Vanity Fare by Megan Caldwell

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

I really love split time narrative novels when they are done well, and this book certainly qualifies as one of those!

The Girl You Left Behind starts in occupied France during World War I. The main female character, Sophie Lefevre, has withdrawn to a small village with her younger brother, her sister Sophie and Sophie's children to run the local hotel. Their men have gone off to war to fight the German army, leaving their families in what they hope are safe surrounds.

Sophie's husband is a talented artist, friends with some of the big name of the day. One of the few possessions that Sophie has bought to her new home is a painting that he did of her - The Girl You Left Behind.

Together the family runs the hotel, providing a place for the community to gather together in the face of the ongoing German occupation of their village. By working together the villagers can find ways to subvert the German occupiers - often only in small ways but enough to be able to at least keep their spirits up! That begins to change though when the local commandant decides that the hotel needs to be begin providing meals to all the officers. He begins to show Sophie signs of favouritism and it doesn't take long for some in the village to begin to believe the worst of her. It is easy for petty jealousies to take over when you believe that someone else is benefitting and getting more than you when have barely enough to survive on.

Sophie is desperate to find out where her husband Edouard is and she believes that the commandant might be able to help her. There is of course a price to pay. The Commandant has been drawn to the painting of Sophie since he first saw it but will that be a higher price to pay than Sophie is prepared to pay?

The action suddenly moves forward just under a hundred years and to be honest, the adjustment felt very abrupt but it didn't take long before I was once again settled in for the modern story, as well hoping to find more about what happened to Sophie. The painting, The Girl You Left Behind, now belongs to Liv Halston. Just as when Edouard painted Sophie as a gesture of love, for Liv the painting is representative of that same emotion. Her brilliant architect husband David had bought the painting for them during their honeymoon and since his early and unexpected death it had provided her great comfort.

When Liv meets Paul McCafferty she believes that maybe she can start to think about moving on from her grief. Paul is an American ex-policeman living in London, sharing custody of his young son with his ex-wife and working for a company that tries to restore ownership of works of art that were wrongly taken during times of war. In an increasingly lucrative business, the pressure to stay at the top is immense and so when the Lefevre family engage his company to try and recover Edouard's painting he can't believe his luck when he literally stumbles on it by accident.

However, his increasingly tangled emotions quickly become an issue as he realises how attached Liv is to the painting and that she is not going to give it up without a fight. Whilst the painting disappeared during WWI, Liv quickly becomes the target of people who are very active for the rights of those whose art was stolen during WWII particularly from Jewish families. Liv had been struggling financially and that was before she had exorbitant legal bills to pay and has become a figure of derision in the eye of the public. Maybe the sensible solution would be to not fight, but Liv is not prepared to just give up. Liv has to try and find out where the painting has been, starting with the place where David bought the painting and work her way back through history. Along the way, perhaps she can find out more about who the girl in the painting is and perhaps even what happened to her...

Jojo Moyes is a bit like a chameleon in terms of her books. A lot of authors find a niche and then stay there but not Moyes. This is the fourth book I have read by her. The first was set predominantly on a boat full of war brides after the end of WWII (Ship of Brides). The second was both in the late 60s through to modern day (Last Letter from her Lover) with the third being wholly contemporary and tackling a huge social issue (Me Before You).

Australian cover

I have enjoyed all of her books I have read so far, but the last couple especially so. In this book, Moyes skillfully took two stories and wove those threads together to form a compelling story. I found myself turning the pages whilst at the same time wondering how on earth she was possibly going to end both stories. Whilst both stories have the possibility of being kind of morbid, the various secondary characters and various events help to keep the emotions balanced. At times funny and uplifting, and at other times heartbreaking, Moyes takes the reader on a journey that covers both time and the emotional landscape.

The UK cover is kind of deceptive, because at first glance it looks quite whimsical but the elements do actually reflect the story. I am not sure about the Australian cover though. It's nice, but whether it would have caught my eye if I hadn't been absolutely excited by the prospect of a new book from Moyes is a different question!

I should mention that there is also a connected novella that is available on e-book only called Honeymoon in Paris which is a prequel to the action in this novel. I haven't read it, but I will, despite being a little cynical about the marketing driven reason for doing this. Then again, there are plenty of publishers that are going down this track of added extras!

Rating 4/5

Synopsis

What happened to the girl you left behind?

In 1916 French artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his wife Sophie to fight at the Front. When her town falls into German hands, his portrait of Sophie stirs the heart of the local Kommandant and causes her to risk everything - her family, reputation and life - in the hope of seeing her true love one last time.

Nearly a century later and Sophie's portrait is given to Liv by her young husband shortly before his sudden death. Its beauty speaks of their short life together, but when the painting's dark and passion-torn history is revealed, Liv discovers that the first spark of love she has felt since she lost him is threatened...

In The Girl You Left Behind two young women, separated by a century, are united in their determination to fight for the thing they love most - whatever the cost.

Challenges

I read this book for the following challenges

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-ARC and Lisa from ANZ Litlovers for the paper copy of this book. This review has been cross-posted at ANZ Litlovers