Jenn Writes

Tag: romance

  • Book Review – Somewhere in France by Jennifer Robson

    Book Review – Somewhere in France by Jennifer Robson

    I’m a historian, and as such, I’m generally leery of reading historical fiction set in the time period I studied – World War One.  Small inaccuracies can drive me crazy.  Especially ones that I consider to be lazy – when the author didn’t do his or her research and messed up dates or places. Or when they have a character write a letter from France and their loved one in England gets it within days.  That rarely happens now, it sure as heck didn’t happen with a war going on and mail being censored.  When I saw the cover of Somewhere in France, I was intrigued. I have friends who really enjoyed the book and I wanted to love it but I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the high expectations I have for World War One historical fiction. I needn’t have worried.  Jennifer Robson has set the new bar for the genre. From the first page I was captivated and unable to put the book down until I had finished. (Total time elapsed – 2.3 hours.) I then went out the next morning and bought the sequel, After The War Is Over, and proceeded to devour it. Then I re-read Somewhere in France.  Re-reading a book isn’t all that uncommon for me, but re-reading a book less than a week after I first read the book? Now *that* was a first.

    The cover of the book Somewhere in France by Jennifer Robson. A woman dressed in a blue dress that evokes the 1910s looks out over a sepia toned image of a French street from the same era
    The cover art is absolutely gorgeous.

    I made an instant connection with the character of Lilly Ashford. I loved her spunk, and her unwillingness to do what others (mostly her parents) wanted her to do with her life and instead follow her heart. I adored the fact that the life she was running away from is the life many of us think we would want – that of an upper class gentlewoman. I may have connected first with Lilly, but every single character in the book was well written.  I felt connected to all of them. Edward, Robbie, Charlotte – each character stole a piece of my heart, I wanted to know everything about them.  I wanted them to be real.

    For a historian, the best part about Somewhere In France is the rich detail that is woven into the narrative. The characters were figments of the imagination but the setting was real.  There really was a Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), and the jobs described in the book such as ambulance driver (Lilly’s chosen vocation), catering (I love the positive spin the Brits put on “mess hall duty”), clerical, and motor transport were actual jobs filled by women during the war in an effort to free up men for front line service.

    The plot moved along at just the right pace, and the side plot with Edward (Lilly’s Brother), kept me on the edge of my seat until the last page.  The ending was perfect, and left me wanting more, which is why I went out and picked up the sequel After The War Is Over.  I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a great piece of fiction that is steeped in the truth. The book doesn’t sugar coat the war, or leave out the tough parts in favour of a love story – it blends the two together perfectly.

    The mini essay “Women Ambulance Drivers in the Great War” which appeared at the end of my copy of the novel went a long way to explaining why I adored the book. Jennifer Robson wasn’t content in finding a single source to prove that there were female drivers in clearing hospitals near the front lines, she dug and dug until she unearthed multiple sources. Truly an author after my own heart.

    My recommendation for Somewhere in France is this: go out and get this book immediately.  Read it, and prepare to have your heart stolen.

  • Book Review: Emily Giffin’s The One and Only

    Book Review: Emily Giffin’s The One and Only

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    For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a complete and total football junkie and have been since I was a toddler.  I’m also an avid reader and quite enjoy the genre known as “chick lit”. One of my favourite writers in this genre has been Emily Giffin . I find her work engaging and fun to read with characters I can relate to. Given this, imagine my glee when I found out that Giffin’s latest book, The One & Only,  was going to feature a female football reporter as the protagonist. I may have squealed. Loudly. Then I made an almost fatal mistake – I crowd sourced. I often hit up Goodreads when I find a book I like just to see what others have thought about it.  I saw a lot of negative Nellies complaining about the book making generalizations about women who love football always being in it for a guy, that there was too much football (no such thing imho) and not enough plot, or that the characters weren’t relatable. I hate feeling disappointed or let down by an author I love so I put the book aside for a few days to think about whether or not I wanted to read it. I took it up to the cottage with me because I’m always running out of books to read (especially when the weather is as dismal as it was this summer, rainy and cold for most of my vacation) and I’m really glad I did. Had I not read the book based on those few Goodreads users who really disliked the book, I would have missed out on one of my favourite books so far this year.

    I could immediately relate to the main character, Shea Rigsby. I lost track of the number of times I said “Oh My God, Yes. That.” while reading after the first 3 chapters. I thought there was just the right amount of football details in the book, especially considering that a portion of the target audience wouldn’t have much prior knowledge of the intricacies of the sport. Giffin was careful to give readers enough information to be able to understand how football worked within the context of the plot but didn’t overload readers with useless tidbits. Being Canadian, I am more used to how college football works up here, so the extra insight into the NCAA and how the organization impacts every team was eye opening.

     

    The One & Only isn’t just a book about football though; it is a book about love, loyalty, football, and change. None of these themes operate in isolation and they all complement each other beautifully to make this book impossible to put down. I think almost every reader can relate to Shea’s struggle to follow her heart and the questions of loyalty that doing that create for her. We have all been in Shea’s shoes at one point in our lives – trying to decide if we should step off the edge into the unknown or stay close to home, with our security blanket. For Shea, stepping off the edge means leaving the town she grew up in, the one where her best friend lives, where she went to college, and where she got a job working for the athletic department at the school. Shea has begun to wonder if all she has ever known is enough – or if there is something better out there in the wider world.  Along the way, Shea finds that some of the people in her life aren’t who she thought they were and that loyalty is more than wearing a team jersey on game day.  In essence this is a coming of age novel, where the protagonist is left to discover The One and Only thing that makes her life worth living.

     

    In the end, I was not able to put the book down until it was finished and have re-read it once already and recommended it to random strangers in bookstores if I saw them hovering near a copy of the book. The moral of my story is pretty simple – don’t judge a book by it’s cover (although this one is gorgeous and understated and perfect), and don’t be put off by a few negative reviews on a social media site. You may miss out on an amazing read.

     

    The One & Only is available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, Audio, and E-book editions.

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