The Paris Daughter

This Kristin Harmel didn’t grab me like her The Book of Lost Names did. I ranked that one a 10. For this WW2 book, saw the plot twist a mile away. Felt Juliet was poorly written and frankly, unrealistically focused on her lost family. How in the world she attracted Husband #2 is a mystery. Or, why he stayed with her, given her constant talking to dead people. Her complete about-face with Elise didn’t resonate. She was okay with Elise leaving Mathilde with her. Then grew bitter for a plot-contrived reason? Just didn’t gel. Elise was well-written. Mathilde, too. Glad there wasn’t too much carnage at the end.

I haven’t read a Kristin Harmel book I didn’t like — and this one does not disappoint! An emotional story about motherhood during one of the most inhumane times in history. Two American woman, Elise and Juliette, found love abroad marrying Frenchman. Diving into each of their stories, we see that their marriages are very juxtaposing to one another. Fate leads these women to cross paths in a park when Elise is having practice contractions and Juliette, a mother of three, takes her to her bookstore and calls a doctor. These two become fast friends deepening their bond when they both give birth to baby girls around the same time. Their girls grow up alongside one another developing a sister-like bond. One day Elise is forced into a difficult decision to flee for her safety and leaves her daughter Mathilde in the trusted care of Juliette’s family as her best chance to survive the war.

I found this story to dive deep into the unique perspective of mothers during WWII and the tough decisions they had to make for their children in hopes to keep them safe from the destruction of war. We also see the emotional struggle post war of what the journey was like to seek out your children not necessarily knowing where they ended up and the grief for families who were unable to locate loved ones. Through this powerful story we understand how powerful words are when we can share someone’s last moments to provide closure for a loved one.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kristin Harmel, and Gallery Books for an ebook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Completely predictable.

Great story about events related to children during WWII. The characters were genuine and the plot held my interest. Ending was a real twist! The author used true life events as the backdrop for the novel.

A good story starts with the setting, and Kristin Harmel’s The Paris Daughter is situated at the Parisian “Bookshop of Dreams…I’ve always believed that books are simply dreams on paper, taking us where we most need to go.” But when the nightmare of World War II bleeds into those idyllic dreams, Elise is forced to flee France and face a soul-severing decision. She separates from her daughter, “like ripping her own heart out of her chest and leaving it beating and bleeding in someone else’s care,” so that her daughter may survive. Love “requires us to leave a bit of ourselves to gain so much more…whatever we give up is worth it in the end, if we give those pieces to someone who loves us back just as fiercely.” Elise leaves Matilde with her best friend Juliette, who loves and protects her daughter as her own. “We will be each other’s family…Here we are across an ocean, facing the unknowable. But I have you, and you have me, and our children have each other.” But when an Allied bomb misses its mark and falls “on a little bookshop that held a family’s hopes and dreams,” Juliette’s family is decimated like so many dominoes of death, while Matilde walks away unscathed. Her anguish morphs into anger, “twisting into a rock of rage…Your daughter is the reason my children are dead!” Sometimes our lives don’t work out the way we intend them to…But decisions have consequences. Juliette blames Elise’s decision for taking everything away from her. But Elise is relentless; war had stolen her daughter, she would not let it take her dignity. “Our children are the very essence of us. They are our hearts. Our souls. How could we survive without them…would a good mother leave her child behind?” What does it mean to love a child? “The right way meant never abandoning your children. Never leaving them behind. Never forgetting that first and foremost, you were their mother.” Juliette “was a good mother. And good mothers did not deserve to have their children taken away.” But “being a parent is not about doing what is right for ourselves, is it? It’s about sacrificing all we can, big and small, to give our children their best chance at life…A mother’s love never goes away, even if circumstance sometimes forces it into hibernation…A mother is a mother forever.”