The Girl You Left Behind Author: Jojo Moyes | Language: English | ISBN:
B00BSY6U6K | Format: PDF
The Girl You Left Behind Description
From the New York Times–bestselling author of Me Before You, a spellbinding love story of two women separated by a century but united in their determination to fight for what they love most Jojo Moyes’s bestseller,
Me Before You, catapulted her to wide critical acclaim and has struck a chord with readers everywhere. “Hopelessly and hopefully romantic” (
Chicago Tribune), Moyes returns with another irresistible heartbreaker that asks, “Whatever happened to the girl you left behind?”
France, 1916: Artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his young wife, Sophie, to fight at the front. When their small town falls to the Germans in the midst of World War I, Edouard’s portrait of Sophie draws the eye of the new Kommandant. As the officer’s dangerous obsession deepens, Sophie will risk everything—her family, her reputation, and her life—to see her husband again.
Almost a century later, Sophie’s portrait is given to Liv Halston by her young husband shortly before his sudden death. A chance encounter reveals the painting’s true worth, and a battle begins for who its legitimate owner is—putting Liv’s belief in what is right to the ultimate test.
Like Sarah Blake’s
The Postmistress and Tatiana de Rosnay’s
Sarah’s Key,
The Girl You Left Behind is a breathtaking story of love, loss, and sacrifice told with Moyes’s signature ability to capture our hearts with every turn of the page.
- File Size: 747 KB
- Print Length: 385 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0670026611
- Publisher: Viking Adult (August 20, 2013)
- Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00BSY6U6K
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > Women's Fiction - #8
in Books > Literature & Fiction > British > Historical - #20
in Books > Romance > Historical
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > Women's Fiction - #8
in Books > Literature & Fiction > British > Historical - #20
in Books > Romance > Historical
Brief summary and review, no spoilers.
This book is narrated by two different women at different points in time. The first part of the novel takes place during WWI and tells the story of Sophie LeFevre, who owns and helps run a bar/cafe in a small town outside of Paris. The town has been taken over by Germans and the locals have all suffered from deprivation and oppression at the hands of their captors.
Sophie and her sister Helene are both concerned about their husbands who are French soldiers and possibly in a prison camp or worse. Sophie's husband is a talented and fairly well-known artist named Eduoard, and Sophie's most prized possession is the portrait he did of her shortly after they first met. She has it prominently displayed on the bar wall. When the German Kommandant sees the portrait, he becomes enthralled with it and with Sophie as well. What will happen to Sophie and her family and to their town if the Germans don't leave? And what will Sophie do in order to save her husband and see him again?
The story then moves to the present times and we meet Olivia (Liv) Halston, a woman who's been in a state of depression and grief since the death of her young husband 4 years earlier. Liv is struggling financially and emotionally but things seem to take a turn for the better when she becomes attracted to a man named Paul McCafferty. Paul works for an agency that tries to give priceless paintings stolen by the Nazi's back to their original owners, and when he spots Sophie's portrait in Liv's home, he feels he must take action.
I really enjoyed the WWI parts of this book, which pretty much make up the majority of the first half.
REVIEWED BY LAURA
I knew absolutely nothing about this book before I read it. My digital advanced reader's copy had no plot description, and I requested it simply because I have read and enjoyed one of the author's previous books, ME BEFORE YOU.
I TOTALLY recommend trying this method of reading sometime. I find that a lot of times book blurbs are WAY too descriptive, so you feel like you already know what is going to happen just from reading the summary. Also, sometimes if you read too many reviews of a book you have unrealistic expectations, and a perfectly lovely book can end up falling short. However, I regret to inform you that because you are reading this review, you will pretty much be unable to duplicate my experience of reading this book. Unless you want to stop reading this post right now. If you do, I'll simply say--READ THIS BOOK.
For those of you who want the more conventional reviewing option, here you go:
Since I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into, I was thrilled that the book starts out in France during World War I. As you may have gathered, WWI is a special interest of mine, and I thought the first part was beautifully written historical fiction. Moyes really made me feel what it would have been like to be a woman with a husband at the Front, and the difficulty of living in an occupied country. She also explores themes of what it means to be "the enemy" and the lengths people are willing to go to save someone they love.
I was also pleased because, although I started the book while in London, I was going to be traveling to France the next day. I was EXTREMELY EXCITED to be reading a book set in France WHILE IN FRANCE. I don't know why this was extremely exciting to me, but it was.
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