THE PARIS DAUGHTER by Kristin Harmel

 

My thoughts

This is another wonderful and very emotional book by Kristin Harmel. The author of The Forest of Vanishing Stars and The Winemaker's Wife. Both of which I read and loved. I highly recommend all three books.

Two women. Two pregnancies. A friendship that runs as deep as sisterhood. 

Elise and Juliette meet in a park and become fast friends. Juliette was concerned when she saw Elise seemed to be experienced pain and was pregnant. Juliette was always one to help anyone or anything that was hurt. These two women became the best of friends. As close as sisters. 

Elise is married to Olivier who is an artist. Elise is also an artist but Olivier talked her into trying wood carving. Elise seemed to excel at this. Soon they were expecting their first baby and both were over the moon with happiness.

Juliette was married to Paul who was the love of her life. They had a love that only comes once in a lifetime. They have a bookstore that everyone loves to visit and the children all love being a part of. They also had two children. Two little boys. Juliette was pregnant with their fourth child also. They had lost a baby girl shortly after it was born. Juliette blamed herself though the doctor told her there was nothing she could have done to stop it. 

Elise and Juliette will take you through so much. Through a lot of ups and downs. Through a friendship that you will root for. There friendship is tested when the war breaks out. Elise's husband is arrested for speaking against the Nazis. She soon learns that he is dead and she has to go into hiding. Without her daughter Mathilde. It would be to dangerous to keep her three year old with her. She asks Juliette and Paul to take care of Mathilde until she can return and they readily agree. Juliette treats her as her own in many ways. She never expects Elise to return.

Then the unthinkable happens. A bomb is accidentally dropped in the neighborhood and hits the library. Juliette's life will never be the same. No ones life will be.

This book takes you from France to the US where you get a new look at Juliette, Elise, and Ruth's  lives after the war. You get to know Ruth a Jewish woman who had to send her two children away and go into hiding. She was found and sent to a camp where her life was horrific. Treated less then human. Left to die. Ruth lets Juliette know that Elise is alive and wants to know what happened to her child Mathilde.

Things take a dramatic turn when Elise comes to the US and finds quite a few things that should not be the way they are. These women's lives again take a big turn. Some for the better and some not so great. 

This book is full of such emotion. From love, happiness, family, and deep sadness. So much loss. It will have you weeping for one mother and possibly mad at the other. Though she did the best she could under the circumstances. It's just a very emotional look at what WW2 did to three families. What it was like living in that time and in Paris during the war. Two American women, Elise and Juliette, experienced it first hand. Ruth lived it.

Be sure and read the Author's Notes at the end. It's full of info that helps.

Thank you #NetGalley, #KristinHarmel, #GalleryBooks for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

FIVE huge stars and the highest recommendation possible. Have lots of tissues. You'll need them.

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of the “heart-stopping tale of survival and heroism” ( People ) The Book of Lost Names comes a gripping historical novel about two mothers who must make unthinkable choices in the face of the Nazi occupation.

Paris, 1939: Young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends the day they meet in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. Though there is a shadow of war creeping across Europe, neither woman suspects that their lives are about to irrevocably change.

When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with the most precious thing in her life—her young daughter, playmate to Juliette’s own little girl. But nowhere is safe in war, not even a quiet little bookshop like Juliette’s Librairie des Rêves, and, when a bomb falls on their neighborhood, Juliette’s world is destroyed along with it.

More than a year later, with the war finally ending, Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, only to find her friend’s bookstore reduced to rubble—and Juliette nowhere to be found. What happened to her daughter in those last, terrible moments? Juliette has seemingly vanished without a trace, taking all the answers with her. Elise’s desperate search leads her to New York—and to Juliette—one final, fateful time.

An “exquisite and gut-wrenching novel” (Lisa Barr, New York Times bestselling author) you won’t soon forget, The Paris Daughter is also a sweeping celebration of resilience, motherhood, and love.