When I was 18, I travelled to Austria and spent a year there as an au pair to two young children. Now I look back on much of it with fondness, though there are elements that make me wish I could go back and change the way I reacted to specific events. And that’s why, when I started to read this book, I could so easily identify with Juliet in this latest novel from Veronica Henry.
When she was just 20, desperate to escape from the life she could see being laid out before her by her mother, working in a department store rather than as a fashion journalist, Juliet took a job as an au pair for a glamorous Parisien couple, looking after their three children. It is there she met Olivier, her first love. But then something went wrong and before she had a chance to do anything, she was back in England and had no choice but to move on, after doing her best to mend her aching heart.
Of course, the book tells the story so much better than I do. Juliet is now nearing 50, recently divorced from her husband Stuart and she has given herself 30 days in Paris to rediscover the person she once was and do all the things that she didn’t get a chance to do when she visited the city before.
As we get to know more about Juliet, about her past in Paris and the events that led to her leaving the city without a chance to say farewell to the friends she had made, we discover that what happened was completely outside of her control. She was an innocent victim.
I have to be honest when she started to talk about the charming husband and father of the Paris-based family, I wondered if she’d had an affair with him, but then she meets Olivier and it was easy to see that while she could have been swayed due to her naivety before, he is not the man for her.
The story switches between the present and the past (or as those chapters are referred to ‘The Ingenue’ – I love that word), and it’s easy to see that the whole process of visiting Paris is cathartic for Juliet. She has come to a crossroads, unsure of where to go but with a small idea of what she wants, and visiting the past as it should have been is a way to make things a little clearer for herself.
I enjoyed the characters, Olivier, Juliet, and Nathalie, and found it reassuring that these friendships/relationships were able to survive after over 30 years of silence.
Nathalie is a vibrant woman who I feel has more of a story of her own – which I would love to discover. There is a moment, when Juliet is talking about her children that Nathalie has an expression on her face, and says that it is a tale for later. I want to know what later holds.
I think that Olivier was always going to be there waiting for Juliet, to a degree. Yes, he had also married and had children and moved on with his life, but when they meet again he tells her that he waited for her, and part of him never stopped.
This is a story of second chances, but it’s also a story that shows you can start again, you can rediscover what you thought was lost. And though I haven’t reached out to the ex I broke up with so spectacularly (for multiple reasons), I did finally search for him on FB, to sort of remind myself, I guess.
I haven’t read any Veronica Henry previously, but she is very similar to Jill Mansell, whose books grace many shelves in my home, and I now have a new author to read.
Pros
- Paris whatever the time of year
- Characters I can identify with – 50 is not old!
Cons
- Want a story about Nathalie now (not a con exactly, but not sure it will happen)
