‘Everyone knows me, but none can see me. I’m that thing you call love’

In a small town in balmy Provence, Marie-Jeanne has a gift.

She can see the marks Love has left on the people around her. Glowing faces, hands that shimmer brighter when enclosed in another. Before long, Marie-Jeanne is playing matchmaker.

When her foster father, Francis, sets up a mobile library travelling the many mountain towns of the Nyons region, Marie-Jeanne takes her quest further. Their library offers entertainment, guidance, reassurance and comfort – but for Marie-Jeanne, the books also allow her to bring soulmates together.

The only person that Marie-Jeanne can’t seem to find a partner for is herself. She has no glow of her own, though she waits and waits for it to appear.

Everyone must have a soulmate, surely – but will Marie-Jeanne be able to recognise hers when Love finally comes her way?

The second book that I reviewed on this blog when I started it back in 2015 was The Little Paris Bookshop, also by Nina George. I adored the story of Jean Perdu who ran a bookshop from his restored barge and stated the book was masterful and memorable, which I can confirm eight years on the story most certainly is memorable.

So when I heard that author Nina George had written a book that connects back to The Little Paris Bookshop, a kind of prequel I had to read it.

This story features Marie-Jeanne who has a gift. Her gift is using books to bring soul-mates together via her father’s travelling library, though she can’t seem to find a soul-mate for herself.

I have such a fondness for the first book that I jumped into this one presuming I was going to love it just as much but I found this story quite heavy going. I struggled with the slow pace and that it takes a long time to actually get the story moving. Artists and poets will probably love this book for its whimsical wordy passages that cross into the magical/fantasy world. We have characters such as death and time, etc who interact and show their hands now and again and the story itself is narrated by love.

The Little French Village of Book Lovers is by no means a bad book. It is intriguing and has some amazing quotable sentences and makes you think. It just took me quite a long time to read it as I had to go back over parts to fully understand them, especially in the first half of the book. I also struggled to connect with Marie-Jeanne who doesn’t come across favourably. However, I can see this being a big hit with readers and book groups who will have a lot to talk about and analyse.

Nina George is a prize-winning and bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop and a freelance journalist since 1992, who has published 26 books as well as over hundred short stories and more than 600 columns.

George has worked as a cop reporter, columnist and managing editor for a wide range of publications, including Hamburger Abendblatt, Die Welt, Der Hamburger, “politik und kultur” as well as TV Movie and Federwelt. Georges writes also under three pen-names.