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France - check
Dual timeline - check
WWII setting - .......wait, what!
Whilst this book is predominantly in the city of Cannes, famous for the film festival and a jet set lifestyle, it also tells the story of two young women who are living in Paris in the early 1960s, and is not, I repeat not, a WWII story!
When TV producer Maggie is asked to go to Cannes to pick up some items from a woman who was friends with her grandmother Elizabeth she is both grateful and surprised. She is grateful because it gives her a chance to get away from her not so great life for just a couple of days, and surprised because she never knew that her grandmother lived in Paris back in the early 1960s.
Maggie knows that the reason her mother is asking her is two-fold. Firstly, her father's dementia is getting increasingly worse and so her mother feels like she needs to always be at home, and secondly to help Maggie get out of her own head following her recent divorce, but she goes along with it anyway.
The plan is that Maggie will go for a couple of days, pick up the box of photos and a camera, and then come back home again. Then Maggie meets Allegra, her grandmother's friend, and Maggie is intrigued. Allegra is an elegant American woman who has retired to Cannes after working as an art dealer for many years and she has many stories about art, jazz and life in Paris, even touching on some less glamorous aspects of life in the city. Soon Maggie is staying longer, getting to know the people who live in the area and getting to know who her grandmother was as a young woman.
While I enjoyed the two stories of love lost and found, and how they came together in the end, the real strength for me was in the details. I loved the way that the author showed Allegra learning about art and jazz. And the food! Helen McGinn is wine expert who appears on a British cooking show called Saturday Kitchen, and you can tell. Part of the story revolves around a vineyard. At one point, she writes about a harvest feast, and it was evocative!
I hadn't read this author before. After reading this book, I will definitely be looking out for more from her!
I am sharing this review with the New Release Challenge hosted by The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews and the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host. Be sure to check out other stops on the tour shown below. Thanks to the publisher, Netgalley and Rachel's Random Resources for the review copy.
Rating 4/5
Under a Riviera Moon
When a heartsick Maggie is sent on an errand by her mother to Cannes, she is keen to get it over with as quickly as possible.
She has been tasked with collecting a treasured box of photos from her late grandmother Elizabeth’s best friend, the impossibly glamorous Allegra Morgon who is desperate to tell Maggie all about the year she and Elizabeth spent in Paris. The sixties were in full swing, the air hummed with jazz, artists and students made the streets their own, and the City of Love was weaving its magic. And against this backdrop, two people were beginning a love story that would last a lifetime - but be over too soon.
As Maggie hears more about Allegra’s life, first in Paris, then New York, and finally on the Riviera, she is captivated and inspired. Was life always leading Maggie to this moment, this beautiful place so she could finally learn to stop living in the past? Because if she can, then another love story for the ages might just be within her reach…
Helen McGinn’s deliciously escapist, unashamedly romantic story is perfect for fans of Carol Kirkwood, Karen Swan and Erica James.
Purchase Link - https://mybook.to/UnderRivieraMoon
About the Author
Helen McGinn is a wine writer, international wine judge and author of the award-winning Knackered Mother’s Wine Guide. She spent almost a decade sourcing wines around the world as a supermarket buyer and appears regularly on BBC1's Saturday Kitchen and ITV's This Morning as their wine expert. She writes about drinks for Waitrose Food Magazine among others and awards include Fortnum & Mason’s Online Drink Writer of the Year. Her bestselling debut novel This Changes Everything was published in February 2021 and her second fiction book In Just One Day later that same year. This Is Us, her third novel, was released in September 2022 and her fourth, The Island of Dreams, in February 2024.
Social Media Links –
Facebook: @knackeredmotherswineclub
Twitter: @knackeredmutha
Instagram: @knackeredmother
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It sounds fun to go on an errand to Cannes ... for a box of photos ... and then it seems to become a bit more with insight into her grandmother's past. France & wine are a big draw for this one it seems. Thx for the review.
ReplyDeleteI would add food to that list as well!
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