I appreciated her interest in her relatives. She seemed very lost and had little to do, which is NOTHING like me. She was an American abroad, which I could relate to from my time studying in Europe, but she didn’t try to fit in and she didn’t know the language which would have frustrated me beyond reason.

I liked Ella, but she was unlike anyone I know and it made it a bit hard to relate to her. Besides that, I liked Ella and I thought she was a really great character to tell this story. I hate books where people cheat on each other ( Brooklyn for example) and it can often ruin a perfectly good book for me. My biggest complaint with the whole novel was Ella cheating on Rick. At first, I was angry that Isabelle’s timeline jumped around, but it was done very well and I understood why after a while. I liked the alternating points of view and how Chevalier used them to move the plot along. This was much more magical than the other Chevalier books I’ve read but the summary had prepared me for that. As the novel unfolds-alternating between Ella’s story and that of Isabelle du Moulin four hundred years earlier-a common thread emerges that unexpectedly links the two women.

Village life turns out to be less idyllic than she expected, however, and a peculiar dream of the color blue propels her on a quest to uncover her family’s French ancestry. When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family of her own. Meet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin-two women born centuries apart, yet bound by a fateful family legacy. “Passionate and compelling.Other books by Tracy Chevalier reviewed on this blog: “Those who admired Chevalier's atmospheric evocation of 17th-century Delft will find much to enjoy in her vivid reconstruction of late 18th-century London.” GUARDIAN “Burning Bright is an ambitious, impressively-researched novel…You can almost smell the smoke and mildewed clothes, see the gaunt, pock-marked faces of people struggling to survive and sense Jem's wonder as he gazes across the murky Thames to a perplexing world.” DAILY EXPRESS “A splendidly vital recreation of Georgian London.” SUNDAY TIMES Jem and Maggie's passage from innocence to experience becomes the very stuff of poetic inspiration… Together they encounter the neighbour they've been warned about: radical poet and artist William Blake. Luckily, streetwise Maggie Butterfield is on hand to show Jem the ropes. They struggle to find their place in this tumultuous city, still alive with the repercussions of the blood-splattered French Revolution. Uprooted from their quiet Dorset village to the riotous streets of London, young Jem Kellaway and his family feel very far from home. ‘Tell me, then: would you say you are innocent or experienced?'ġ792.

The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier