Book Review - The French Guesthouse by Isabelle Broom

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Title: The French Guesthouse

Author: Isabelle Broom

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Publication Date: 6th November 2025

Rating: 4 Stars

Sometimes the only way to rebuild is to face the past you tried to escape...

On the night Fliss loses everything - her beloved hotel ravaged by fire and fiancé exposed as a cheat - she receives devastating news: her estranged mother has died. They hadn't spoken in fifteen years and Fliss has stayed away for her own self-preservation.

Summoned to a dilapidated guesthouse in France for the reading of the will, Fliss is stunned to discover she has been left all her mother's possessions. But the inheritance comes at a price - both literal and emotional. Sharing the house is Etienne, her mother's grief-stricken, wine-soaked partner, and his guarded yet magnetic nephew, Benoit.

As Fliss begins restoring the guesthouse, she unearths long-buried secrets about her mother, their past and the true cost of her long absence. But to move forward, cure her guilt and claim the love and happiness she's never thought she deserves, Fliss must first reckon with the hardest question of all: can she forgive?

I really felt for Fliss, what an opening to the book she has.  Her hotel being set alight, discovering the cause of that involves her fiancée cheating, and then hearing that her mother has died all at the same time. 

Now Fliss hasn't been in contact with her mother for many years with good reason, as you discover when you learns more about her,  but regardless as per instructions she sets off to France for the will reading, and discovers she has inherited a property. 

Just that she has to share it with Benoit, and Benoit's uncle is a sitting tenant. Etienne is heartbroken over the death of Fliss's mum, and Fliss initially struggled with Etienne, and the idea she may need to stay in France for a while to get this property saleable. 

What follows is a story of Fliss learning more than she ever knew about her mother, which included the heart breaking truths of just why Lilah was like she was.  And Fliss needs to learn to come to terms with so much, all the while fighting attraction for Benoit, while she is still engaged to a scumbag (not that she quite sees it like that). 

I really enjoyed getting to know all of these characters and their back stories so much.  I did at times struggle with Fliss, but ultimately did like her in the end.  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the town in France, in addition to the people that are helping on the house. 

There are some lovely characters, and this was a highly enjoyable book. 

Thank you to Hodder and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.