Louise, Léa’s mother-in-law, is a strong character, one who is always proper and maintains the façade, no matter how difficult things get or what she might be feeling inside. I have mentioned Léa, who tells her story in the first person, with some fragments (in italics) when she remembers the past in a vivid and immersive manner that makes us identify with her, and suffer her same pain. And… Of course, I’m not going to tell you what happens, but the story deals with grief, loss, family relationships, also life in a small (French) village, prejudices and rumours, and how life has changed since the late 1960s (so close and yet so far). Of course, nobody else believes them, time passes, and some sort of life develops, but Léa and her family keep waiting. Life becomes increasingly difficult, and the only hope Léa has comes from her two neighbours and friends, Clotilde and Bev, as Clotilde reads the cards and insists that the girls are all alive and well. To make matters worse, three other girls are also kidnapped and efforts to find them fail. Léa, who had poured her energies into her new project (an auberge by a beautiful lake) in an attempt at regaining some peace and thirst for life, is devastated, and her relationship with her husband, already strained, ends up breaking. Imagine a woman who’s already lost a child, having to live through the kidnapping of her now only daughter. That combined with a very vivid style of writing, the epitome of showing rather than telling (one can really see, smell, hear, and even taste what is happening to the characters and share in their experiences) mean that reading her novels is a truly immersive experience.Īnd this one is not an exception, but rather an excellent example of the best qualities of her writing. She combines complex and compelling characters (female characters usually take centre stage), with plots that grab the readers’ attention and don’t let go. She writes historical fiction set in a variety of eras (from the Middle Ages to WWII, mostly in France) and also fiction set in the second half of the XX century, often in her native Australia. I came across Perrat’s novels through Rosie’s Book Review Team and have been an admirer and follower since. I had access to a very early ARC of this novel by Liza Perrat, the first in a new series, which I freely chose to review.
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