Welcome to day seven of my #FrenchVillageBookworm
Advent Calendar where I’m featuring a different book every day until Christmas.
I have been a big fan of romance
author Juliette Sobanet for many years. Her first self-published novel was the
first ebook I ever read, squinting at the tiny text on Ade’s iphone on car
journeys that I wished could have been longer. I have followed her career,
swooned my way through many of her novels and novellas, where the men
know just how to treat a lady and the France they are set in is full of
chocolate, patisseries and cobble streets paved with love. This book however is
very different and my excitement about getting my hands on a new book from her
was equally matched with apprehension at discovering the inner secrets of
Danielle, the real person behind the romance author Juliette. The fact there is
no real Juliette was a shock at first, but as a social media follower I knew
this before reading this book.
 |
| Day seven #FrenchVillageBookworm Advent Calendar |
Meet Me in Paris: A Memoir
is the true tale of a hopeless romantic addicted to writing, travel and France who found
herself in a marriage where she had to be someone she wasn’t for everyday life
to tick over nicely, despite loving a husband who also loved her. One day she
spread her wings, took off to experience freedom and to find the passion she
could only write about, divorcing her husband and having an affair that gave her great highs but deep lows too. She is a good example
of the torment of the creative mind who needed to flee what she feared was
slowly killing her inner soul, but the price of freedom was high. It was not
an easy journey, there were some very dark days for her when loneliness and
depression zapped her of her energy and threatened her life. There were times
when I felt very sad, times when I felt she was selfish and times I wished she
would just stop making the wrong decisions and get on a plane to France, which
she does numerous times throughout the book.
is the true tale of a hopeless romantic addicted to writing, travel and France who found
herself in a marriage where she had to be someone she wasn’t for everyday life
to tick over nicely, despite loving a husband who also loved her. One day she
spread her wings, took off to experience freedom and to find the passion she
could only write about, divorcing her husband and having an affair that gave her great highs but deep lows too. She is a good example
of the torment of the creative mind who needed to flee what she feared was
slowly killing her inner soul, but the price of freedom was high. It was not
an easy journey, there were some very dark days for her when loneliness and
depression zapped her of her energy and threatened her life. There were times
when I felt very sad, times when I felt she was selfish and times I wished she
would just stop making the wrong decisions and get on a plane to France, which
she does numerous times throughout the book.
Ultimately this book is a journey
of discovery and recovery, where Paris and Lyon try their best to soothe her
troubled mind and help her move forward to a happier place. She just needs to
work out where to find this happiness; is it in France, in her marriage, in the
arms of her lover or is there something else? Her writing certainly became very
important in her healing process and this led to an emotionally charged memoir that
contains some strong language and scenes of a sexual nature.
At the end of the book I found
myself wondering how I felt. Danielle has slightly deflated my dream of the
typical life I expected a romance novelist like Juliette Sobanet to be living, but
I can’t help but feel privileged she has shared her real life with her readers.
Characters in a novel have ups and downs before finding their happily ever
afters, real life is a different story altogether. She will always be Juliette
to me and I can’t wait for her to feel ready to write another chocolate filled romance set in France.
Meet Me in Paris: A Memoir
is available in ebook and
paperback format and links to Amazon can be found below.
is available in ebook and
paperback format and links to Amazon can be found below.
To read my reviews of her novels
click on the links below, to read the guest post she wrote for me about her novel Midnight Train to Paris click here
and for my France et Moi interview with Juliette click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please don't be shy, I love to hear from you.