Book review of Seven Letters from Paris by Samantha Verant

Seven Letters from Paris Samantha Vérant

My review today is for Seven Letters from Paris: A Memoir by Samantha Vérant, her first memoir and a beautiful love story with heartbreak and happy ever after, that reads more like a fairytale romance than the real life it is.

When life doesn’t go to plan, what girl doesn’t dream of having her own real life ‘Pretty Woman’ fairytale moment? At the end of an unhappy marriage that had left her deep in debt, Samantha finds seven love letters tucked away in the bottom of a storage box. These love letters are 20 years old and despite her never having replied at the time, offer her a glimmer of hope and future happiness. The fact that they were written by a very sexy sounding Frenchman, who as well as being a rocket scientist wasn’t afraid of opening his heart to her, is just a bonus.

This memoir lets us read the letters and follows Samantha and Jean-Luc as they make contact, become very good friends and eventually meet up with a view to working out if they can have a shared future together. They both showed great courage. For Samantha to walk away from an unhappy marriage was like stepping off a cliff into the unknown, and although her new future promised to have Jean-Luc at her side it must still have felt like another cliff! The distance from her home in California to his in Toulouse, his children who had already lost their Mother, the language difficulties and the paperwork, were just some of the obstacles to be faced together. Although their journey was not without heartache and huge risk I can’t help but feel pleased for Samantha that she re-found her prince and now lives in wedded bliss with him in France.

I got to the end and I couldn’t help grinning at the loveliness of it and really feel it should be made into a film. Even Disney couldn’t have written a love story this romantic. But don’t worry; it’s not too gushy, sweet and sickly.

Seven Letters from Paris: A Memoir is published by Sourcebooks and is available in paperback and ebook format. I’m delighted to announce Samantha will be answering my questions for a France et Moi interview this Friday.