Review: Escape to the French Farmhouse

Escape to the French Farmhouse by Jo Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm torn by this novel, the grumpy cynical side of me says this is a typical rose-coloured glasses view of living in a foreign country where the locals are only too happy to help out a complete stranger, just because they smile and attempt to speak the language. Even the attempts at showing that not everything is picturesque is done in a soft-focus way.

And yet the other half of me, the one that wells up when she sees a 99 year old man walking round his garden to raise money for the National Health Service, tells the cynical side to back off bi-yatch because we loved this. The chance to start a new life, albeit at the eleventh hour, in rural Provence, France against a backdrop of lavender (even though I can't stand the smell of the stuff) comes to Della just as she realises her marriage to Ollie is over. As he returns to the UK, as so many expats do after only a short time, Del chooses to stay. Del and Ollie's life in Provence had been about eating at the fancy bistro and meeting the other expats in the pub for a quiz night, it had nothing about becoming part of the local community. On her own Del quickly makes friends with a young man at the local brocante (half junk shop, half antiques shop, half flea market - hey, I'm an accountant I can make numbers do whatever I want), the local estate agent and a local restauranteur and her mission to find a new career to pay the mortgage on the crumbling French farmhouse they bought leads her to start baking biscuits and cakes infused with the local lavender.

This was feel-good stuff, the sort of novel where everyone is friendly and helpful, the only nasty people are the British expats who don't see the irony of trying to push people out 'who don't belong' in their idealised version of Provence The descriptions of the food that Del bakes are really mouth-watering (despite the addition of lavender) and I am only sorry that the ARC did not have the nine pages of recipes which are promised for the final book.

Overall, if you are looking for an escapist romance where the sun always shines and you change your life on a whim this is definitely the novel for you. It's warm, gentle, life-affirming and just the sort of thing to read on the beach (or in lockdown) or even on a cold winter's day when the idea of sunshine and warmth seems a distant memory.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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