The French War Bride
Written by Robin Wells
Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley and Ann Marie Lee
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Now Kat wants to know the truth behind a story that's haunted her whole life. Finding out how Amelie stole Jack's heart will-she thinks-finally bring her peace. As Amelie recalls the dark days of the Nazi occupation of Paris, The French War Bride reveals how history shapes the courses of our lives . . . for better or for worse.
Robin Wells
When Robin Wells sold her first romance novel in 1995, her family celebrated at a Chinese restaurant. Robin's fortune cookie read, "Romance moves you in a new direction." And it certainly has! Robin has since written sixteen critically acclaimed novels that have been translated into eighteen languages. Her books have won the National Golden Heart Award, two National Readers' Choice Awards, the Award of Excellence, the Golden Quill, and the Holt Medallion. Robin's latest book, Still the One, was nominated for a Rita Award, the highest award the National Romance Writers of America gives an author, at the RWA national conference last July. Robin was born in Waco, Texas and holds a B.A. in liberal arts from the University of Oklahoma. Before becoming a full-time writer, Robin worked as an advertising and public relations executive for a major hotel chain. She loves working with new writers and teaches a course called "How to Write a Novel" at Southeastern Louisiana University's Mandeville campus. Robin lives with her husband, two daughters and a very spoiled dog named Winnie the Poohdle in Mandeville.
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Titles in the series (2)
The Wedding Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The French War Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for The French War Bride
17 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amelie Michaud is sixteen and living a happy life in Paris when World War II starts. At first little seems to happen, even with her brothers going off to join the army, but then little troubles become big troubles and finally major hardship. Amelie and her best friend, Yvette, wind up on their own in Paris, working menial jobs to survive, and spying for the Resistance.
Meanwhile, we have the frame story--Amelie O'Connor, seventy years later, likes to keep the door to her little apartment at her assisted living facility open, to receive visitors. One day she receives a very unexpected visitor--Kat Thompson, former fiancée of her late husband, Jack O'Connor. Kat has never gotten over resenting the fact that her fiancé came home with a French war bride. Now that she's dying of cancer, her hospice counselor says she needs to forgive for her own peace of mind, and her minister tells her she needs to forgive for the sake of her own soul. So now, she wants the story of what happened between Amelie and Jack. Right now.
Amelie agrees to tell her, but in her own way, which involves telling her experiences through the whole war, while Kat doesn't see why anything prior to Amelie meeting Jack can possibly be relevant to what she wants to know.
Kat, it turns out, has very definite ideas about what must have happened.
Amelie recounts the story of the increasing hardships and terrors of the war years, as she and Yvette slowly lose their entire families, and need more and more desperate measures to survive, while taking greater and greater risks to support the Resistance and help defeat the Germans. They each lose their first loves, struggle to get enough food while the German occupiers eat in a meal what an entire French family needs to make last a week.
It's near the end of the war when Amelie meets Jack, and the truth of what happened challenges Kat's assumptions, and challenges her view of herself.
Both the historical background, and the personality development, including the relatively tricky on of Kat, are well-handled.
Recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The French War Bride tells the story of Amelie O'Connor and Kat Thompson and how these two women fell in love with the same man Jack O'Connor. The women meet sixty years after World War II in a nursing home. Moreover, through a gripping and haunting story told by author Robin Wells Amelie's tale of living through the Nazi occupation of Paris unfolds and Kat finally, learns how Amelie became her ex-fiances wife during the war. The French War Bride is a true masterpiece of work and for anyone that enjoys love stories intertwined with the background of World War II will truly be a fan of this book. Author Wells brilliantly spins real events beautifully against the fictional backdrop of these characters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5At her retirement home in Wedding Tree, Louisiana, ninety-one-year-old Amelie O’Connor is approached by Kat Morgan, the ex-fiancée of her late husband, Jack.Although her life has been happy, Kat, now in hospice, has questions that only Amelie can answer.High school sweethearts, Jack and Kat were to marry when Jack returned from France after World War II.Instead Jack returns with his French war bride, Amelie and a baby.Amelie insists that understanding only can come by retelling her life story.Interjections by Kat, reveal her character and complete thelove triangle.The story is not a "quick read", there is so much to learn ofthe mettle of this French woman caught in the perils of World War II.Bittersweet and intricate, this is definitely a worthwhile historical fiction read.