Monday 18 July 2016

Book Review - French Coast: a novel by Anita Hughes - #20BooksofSummer - Rachel Reads Randomly Book #31

Amazon UK
Title: French Coast: A Novel
Author: Anita Hughes
Format reviewed: Paperback
Source: Competition Win
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: 7th April 2015
Rating: 4 Stars


Serena has the job she's always dreamed of and Chase, the man her heart never dared to. As a new editor at Vogue, she bags the biggest interview of the year with Yvette Renault, the infamous former editor of French Vogue, in The Carlton-InterContinental Hotel during the Cannes Film Festival. She eagerly jets off to France while Chase stays home, working with her father, a former senator, on his upcoming mayoral campaign.

Everything feels unbelievably perfect...until it doesn't. The hotel loses her reservation hours before her big interview. Serena fears that she'll have to go home without her story, but then she meets Zoe, a quirky young woman staying in the suite below Yvette's who invites Serena to stay with her. Serena is grateful for her mysterious roommate's generosity, but it seems that there's more to her story than meets the eye. To make matters worse, soon after arriving in Cannes, Serena learns a shocking secret about her parents' marriage, and it isn't long before she begins to question her own relationship.With her deadline looming and pressure mounting, Serena will have to use her investigative journalism skills, new 

friendships, and a little luck to get her life and love back on track. Fast paced and impeccably written, 
French Coast will draw readers in to the intoxicating world of the Cote D'Azur. Hughes' beautiful prose and sense imagery bring the food, fashion, and feel of the ocean to life in this audacious new novel.

I won a copy of French Coast around a year ago, and in the past year there have been a few times when I was going to pick it up to start reading, but something stopped me. After reading my first Anita Hughes book earlier this year I was even more apprehensive about starting French Coast, purely as I wasn't really sure what to expect...

...what I discovered very early on was that I was enjoying French Coast a whole deal and really felt as though I was reading a story, or in fact multiple stories set around Cannes, on the French Riviera. 

Serena is a journalist and in her biggest job ever has to interview former French Vogue editor Yvette, in Cannes for a month, to help write her memoirs. The hotel has no record of Serena's reservation and she ends up sharing a suite with a kind young women called Zoe Pistachio. But just why is Zoe willing to share a suite with a stranger?

I loved hearing Yvette reminisce about her love life to be precise, as well as Serena's time on the French Coast. Serena is having a mixed time of things, as she meets a new man who keep popping up, and both she and Zoe have a whole variety of family dramas to deal with. 

With a fabulous mix of glitz, glamour, sun and summer, this is a gorgeous summery beach read, especially if you are going on holiday to the south of France yourself. There are ups and downs and the book moves along at a reasonable pace, and its clear the author has been to the area, as I could just imagine myself in some of the locations. 

I enjoyed French Coast far more than I was anticipating, which just shows that even the books you can't recall why you bought and are languishing somewhere on a TBR list, are worth a try at some point. 

Thank you to everyone who voted for this, just shows that people read my comments and don't just go for the pictures posted on twitter each week! It was 4th time at least lucky on Rachel Reads Randomly for French Coast. Very curious as always to see what you will pick for me next, as you all seem to have impeccable taste. 

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