Book review of Treaty of Blood by Michael Jecks

Treaty of Blood by Michael Jecks

Treaty of Blood by Michael Jecks

Once they'd had enough of war... Now they've had enough of peace

1359, Northern France. With the ink still drying on the Treaty of Bretigny, an agreement most believed to be nothing more than a stalemate between King Edward III of England and John II of France, the country is left riddled with both English and France armies – exhausted, adrift and directionless.

An atmosphere ripe for rebellion.

Berenger Fripper returns to the only life he truly understands, among the troops of Hawkwood’s company. But danger and treachery lurk around every abandoned French farm or village. When the company comes across the promise of riches hidden in a monastery, the motley crew finally feel as though their luck is changing…

But as quickly as they find the treasure, quicker still it’s stolen from under their noses, and as they seek revenge on the unknown thief, they find themselves swept up in the might - and the politics - of the Great Company… Will any of them get out alive?

Treaty of Blood by Michael Jecks

My review

We are back once again with the company of Englishmen from the previous books in this series, trying to make their fortunes on the battle grounds of France, as they serve their king and try their best to stay alive.

This book is a gritty telling of some of the bloodiest times in the history between England and France, bringing to life the horror of battles fought in remote areas of the countryside. Once again it sparked my imagination, especially where I can visualise the locations as they are today. Walls and ancient bastides may not be able to divulge what they witnessed all those centuries ago, but immersing yourself into the pages of a good book can flesh out what history has told us.

Treaty of Blood by Michael Jecks

As I’ve read my way through this series, I can’t say these men have become my friends, they are not those sorts of characters, however something about them has ignited something within me. The dangers of their chosen path meant there were many times I was reading through held-in breaths, almost willing the chapter to finish and the action to calm a little. Maybe reading at bedtime wasn’t my best idea!

This book is certainly one for the summer wish lists of the historical fiction fans out there.

Purchase links

French Village Diaries is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk at no extra cost to you.

Ebook – all digital retailers  

 

Author Bio  

Michael Jecks is the author of over 50 novels inspired by history and legend. He is the founder of Medieval Murderers, and has served on the committees of the Historical Writers’ Association, the CWA and he Detection Club. He was International Guest of Honour at the Bloody Words festival in Toronto, and Grand Master of the first parade in the New Orleans Mardi Gras.

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You can read my reviews of Fields of Glory and Ashes of Rebellion, also by Michael Jecks here:

Fields of Glory

Ashes of Rebellion

Treaty of Blood by Michael Jecks

 

  

Chateaux hunting in the Charente

La Rochefoucauld Chateau

As 2026, and life in general, hurtles by at an ever-increasing pace, last weekend gave us a welcome pause and time to reconnect.

Gallerie 16, Chef Boutonne

Saturday morning saw me giving a brief talk about the history of the Château de Javarzay at a local art gallery, and while this may seem a little close to work, it actually mentally prepared me for this coming weekend’s opening of the château. My mind could retrieve the knowledge stored over winter, dust it off and make sure all was where it should be. 

Gallerie 16, Chef Boutonne

Gallerie 16, in the heart of Chef Boutonne, is a wonderful venue and so much more for the community than just an art gallery. As well as showcasing the works of local artists, the gallery, run by a dynamic woman who is as passionate as I am about promoting our area, holds regular events and talks in its delightful setting. It was an honour for me to be invited along to share my local knowledge with a welcoming and appreciative audience.

Opening weekend festivities at the Chateau de Javarzay, Chef-Boutonne

This year, the opening of the château tourist season will be vibrant as the colours and costumes of Venice and its carnival come to life. The opening weekend usually marks the start of my working year but not this year. My role at the Chef Boutonne council has evolved into a full-time position, splitting my time between the library and the château, as well as other communication tasks, including social media posts and event posters, working in a dynamic and supportive team of creative women. It really is a dream role for me.

Hedgerow blossoms in March

Sunday proved to be just as awakening. The weather was perfect for a bike ride, so we set off for a 50 km châteaux hunt, in the Charente. The frost and snow of early January, that were followed by storms and flooding in February, have given way to a lush and vibrant March. The wildflowers in the verges: cowslips, wild daffodils, aconites and snake’s head fritillaries, seem more prolific than ever this year, and the first hedgerow blossoms (that will hopefully give way to sloes in autumn) are stunning to look at and alive with bees. 

La Rochette

It was a delight to be out and about, butterflies trying to keep pace with me one minute, bird song breaking through my thoughts another. We paused in La Rochette to admire the turreted château and the Romanesque Church, with special mention going to its stone carvings and gilded altar. Our destination was La Rochefoucauld, which is home to a very impressive Renaissance château whose family have links with the Château de Javarzay. I hadn’t realised it would be open for visits, so that treat will have to wait for another day, but we did have time to explore the town and learn about its history thanks to the Terra Aventura geocaching app, and treat ourselves to a flan from a boulangerie - that was open on a Sunday afternoon, in rural France, in March. What a win!

The Romanesque church, La Rochette, Charente

While cycling has still featured to get to and from work this winter (when it’s not been stormy), our last 50 km day on the bikes was five months ago, when we were in the Creuse for a few days in October. While the weather isn’t entirely to blame for this, work and two trips back to England have played their part too, almost half a year without a cycling day trip adventure is crazy. I hadn’t appreciated how much I’d missed it, and it was a real tonic for the mind and body. Luckily, we have a few mini adventures in the pipeline this spring.

Book review of The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien

The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien

The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien

Inspired by the true story of a woman who used knitting patterns to encode intelligence during World War Two.  

Guernsey, 2010. After a stroke, an elderly woman shocks her family by speaking perfect French – a language they never knew she possessed. As her granddaughter unravels seventy years of silence, a hidden wartime story emerges...

Paris, 1941. After her brother is declared missing in action at Dunkirk, eighteen-year-old Lenny Gallienne vanishes into Churchill’s secret army. In a bookshop on Rue de la Pompe, she poses as a simple shop girl while encoding intelligence from Nazi headquarters into knitting patterns. Each sweater smuggled to prisoners contains flight paths. Each scarf holds radio frequencies. Each mistake means execution.

Fellow agent, Harry Dennison is the only person who knows her real name. But when the SS close in, Lenny faces an impossible choice in the Metro tunnels beneath Paris – one that will haunt her family for generations. Because in the resistance, the most dangerous secrets are the ones you keep from those you love most.

The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien

My review

Set partly in Guernsey, as well as London, Scotland and occupied Paris, this dual timeline novel tells an emotional story of determination, espionage, heartbreak and above all family bonds.

Lenny is pushed to her limits, physically and mentally, but shows a resilience to adapt and keep going whatever her superiors and the Germans throw at her. Desperate to find a way to remember the morse code, Lenny practises it over and over again, in her knitting. This ingenious idea, born out of the practicality of a woman doing her best to be accepted into the male-dominated SOE (special operations executive) world, sparked a whole new adventure for her in this book, before circumstances led to the unravelling of her dreams.

The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien

The knitting element to this book intrigued me and really added that new edge to a genre I’m well-read in. I’m not a knitter but do know my knit and pearl stitches and just loved how something so simple as knitting was used in the storyline, although, I would have liked to have seen it play a more important role out in the field.

This book was an enjoying step back in time for those, like me, who love a book set during the Occupation of Paris.

Purchase links

French Village Diaries is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk at no extra cost to you.

Amazon link UK / US

 

 

Author Bio  

Jenny O’Brien writes complex thrillers and heartbreaking historical fiction, as well as intriguing romances. Silent Cry, initially self published, topped the Amazon kindle chart in both the UK and the USA. Most of her books have followed suit. 

Jenny has over 40 years experience as a qualified nurse. She turned to creative writing as a hobby when her children were born. 

Born in Ireland, she now lives in Guernsey with her husband and children.

BOOK NEWS 

The Resistance Knitting Club comes out in February, 2026. A blend of Jenny’s two hobbies - knitting and reading. For more check out The Resistance Knitting Club Facebook Page. Join the conversation as well as share your crafting projects. 

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The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien

Book review of The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

🥖🥐🥖🥐 Grab your passport for the first in the European Escapes series 🥐🥖🥐🥖

No home. No job. No boyfriend.

When Lia loses her job straight after a break-up, she escapes to the Molins’ family-run boulangerie in Toulouse – the place she was last happy, far away from her cheating ex.

Sworn off men, she isn’t prepared for the spark she feels for charming cheesemaker Jean-Luc, nor for things heating up at the family’s country home in Gascony when handsome, self-assured vineyard-owner Théo asks her out.

Torn between the two and her connections to the Molins family, Lia has some tough decisions to make.

Lia loves being back in France with the people she cares about, helping in the boulangerie. On discovering it is under threat of closure, she is devastated and resolves to do everything in her power to help it stay open.

Will she succeed? And will she be able to choose between the two handsome Frenchmen and live her happily ever after?

For fans of Gillian Harvey, Rebecca Raisin, Jo Thomas and Veronica Henry.

The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

My review

This book cleverly illustrated the good and the not so good in the life of a family run boulangerie in France, plus a whole lot more that kept me turning the pages, wonderfully absorbed in Lia’s adventures in France. 

Following a tough time, Lia takes the dramatic decision to return to the boulangerie in France, where she had spent a short but happy part of her youth. She is warmly welcomed by her former host family, and with the maturity that comes with age, now sees their lives in a different light. In some ways, everything is just as she remembered: the bedroom, the scent of freshly baked bread (that I am sure I could also smell), and the love of the family. She now also appreciates the important role the boulangerie has in the neighbourhood and the difficulties for the family as they juggle the unsociable hours and long days with family life.

The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

As the pressure mounts for the Molins family, Lia wants to do all she can to help them out. Learning who to trust when you are new to an area is never easy, but I certainly enjoyed meeting the local characters alongside Lia as she took her first steps helping in the shop. I am a great believer in always saying yes to new opportunities, especially if they take you out of your comfort zone and Lia did just this, which gave us an exciting and entertaining read, full of French promise.

The comfort of the baked goods, the love of the family, plus the simmering heat of romance and the spark of an idea that could change her life forever, all set with the beautiful city of Toulouse as a backdrop - I couldn’t have asked for anything more from this book. 

Purchase links

French Village Diaries is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk at no extra cost to you.

Amazon link 

Ebook – all digital retailers  

 

Susan Buchanan

Author Bio  

Susan Buchanan writes contemporary romance, women’s fiction and romantic comedies, usually featuring travel, food, family, friendship, community – also Christmas!

Her books are Sign of the Times, The Dating Game, The Christmas Spirit, Return of the Christmas Spirit, A Little Christmas Spirit, A Taste of Christmas Spirit and Just One Day – Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, The Leap Year Proposal, You Can’t Hurry Love and The Boulangerie on the Corner.

As a freelance developmental editor, copyeditor and proofreader, if she’s not reading, editing or writing, she’s thinking about it.  

She is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors. 

She lives near Glasgow with her husband, two children and a crazy Labrador. 

When she’s not editing, writing, reading or caring for her two delightful cherubs, she likes going to the theatre, playing board games, watching quiz shows and eating out, and she has a penchant for writing retreats.

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The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

Giveaway to Win a signed and dedicated paperback of The Boulangerie on the Corner (Open to UK Only)

*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome.  Please enter using the Gleam box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

Win a signed and dedicated paperback of The Boulangerie on the Corner (Open to UK Only)

It's been a long winter, this week

Frosty trees at Javarzay
photo credit Edward Brown

It’s been a long winter, this week

A week ago, we arrived back in France having spent Christmas and New Year in England with our families. We had been spoiled rotten, meals out, centrally heated houses with plush carpeted floors, and weather kind enough to allow us to wrap up warmly and walk regularly. France hasn’t been so gentle on us; in fact, this week has been a bit of a shock to the system.

With Mum on New Year's Eve

Our journey home was rather exciting with a ferry full to bursting and way more French being spoken around us than English, followed by a dark drive in Normandy on roads that were edged in white and glowed ominously in the car headlights. As we made our way to a hotel just north of Rouen, the satnav, that has ideas of intelligence way above reality, sent us deep into the undulating countryside, where we crept along deserted roads whose surfaces resembled ice-rinks, all to avoid a one-way system on the final approach to the hotel car park. 

The drive home the following day began at -6º and alternated between freezing cold with sunshine, and freezing fog which decorated the trees in a beautiful, sparkling hoary frost. You could say it was a day where everything was freezing, but on our arrival home, the fridge-freezer in the kitchen was anything but freezing. I guess after over twenty-one years of sterling service, it was bound to pack up at some point, but to choose a week when we weren’t here was a little unfair. The first task having unpacked the car, was to throw most of the contents of the freezer into bin bags and to make up a soup with what could be saved. The second task was to call the water company, fill up as many pans of water as possible and then turn the water back off as while the fountain from the stopcock tap was pretty, it wasn’t a feature we needed. Welcome home and Happy New Year!

Snow on the back gate

The week then threw us from one challenging meteorological state to another as we lunged from an orange alert for snow on Tuesday, that became an ice-rain warning on Wednesday, only to be replaced with the strong winds and rain warning on Thursday and Friday as storm Goretti appeared from the Bay of Biscay. Deep joy. The bikes were left untouched and the car too on Tuesday and Wednesday, as I set up office on the dining room table and clicked away on my laptop preparing the spreadsheets for the 2026 season at the château as well as some promotional bits and bobs for upcoming château and library events.

New fridge-freezer safely loaded onto lovely friend's trailer

It was a relief to get to the weekend having survived 48 hours with no running water, a week using the porch as a fridge and thankfully missed the worst of storm Goretti, whose full force hit further north. Saturday was an exciting outing to buy a new fridge-freezer, and Sunday was celebrated with our first bike ride of the year. It is unusual for us to go so long without cycling as we are not generally only fair-weather cyclists, but the winter this week was intense. I’m crossing my fingers for a calmer second half to January and as I spotted some snowdrops this morning, the signs of spring won’t be far behind.

The first bike ride of 2026

Don’t forget, if you want to know the dates for the public and school holidays in France this year, and how other notable dates are celebrated, click here to read my traditional 1^st of January post.