The French Promise

            This book is the greatly awaited sequel to the book “The Lavender Keeper”. Author of this book, Fiona McIntosh, is author of children and adult books, who lives in Australia. Some of her books are: The Lavender Keeper, The French Promise, Nightingale, The Perfumer’s Secret, The Tailor’s girl, Tho Chocolate Tin etc. While the first sequel “The French Promise” takes place in the occupied France during the World War II, “The French Promise” depicts how Luc and Lisette Ravens succeeded to rebuild their lives after the World War II. 

            This breath-taking fiction book will take you from south coast of England to sunny Tasmania and fashionable London and Paris eventually finding a way to your heart. Reading the book, I could easily imagine cloudy south England, and beautiful Tasmania with magical sunshine and amazing people. And as in “The Lavender Keeper” I walked the streets of London and Paris, admiring their fashion and culture. 

            Reading this book made me think about a lot of things. I never thought what life had people after World War II, did they have difficulty in coping with normal life again, could be quite normal life after all horror that people went through. This book made me think about that and about resilience of different people, and how it can be in coming to terms with all that happen. While there are many lessons to take from this book, one of them had the greatest impression on me was lesson of letting the past be in past. With different characters and their personal stories, Fiona pictures how “living in the past” can ruin happiness and destroy families and individual lives. Also, author gives positive example of “living in the present” through the character of Lisette Ravens. Lisette is woman who can be great role model, she was brave during the war, thrived after the war, was great wife and great mother, building block of her family. Even after war she found way to live happily, to fulfil her dreams and see the silver linings again. On the other side, Luc had lived majority of the time in the past, thinking about revenge, trying to remember all the bad things from the war, thereby missing the great life and happiness in front of him. This leads to many others topics like does revenge can give people peace or is forgiveness better solution, does it is better for some things to buried as secrets or let people know them even if it can deeply hurt them. 

            I enjoyed reading this book very much and it has caused a torrent of emotions in me. In some moments, I was laughing, in other moments I was thinking so deeply, but I also felt so sad and cried I lot during some parts. I felt like I know Luc and Lisette in real life and I felt their sorrows and their happiness. This is the book that has special place on my book shelves and the book that I could never forget. I really hope that one day there will be sequel to this book, I can’t yet accept that Luc’s story finished.