Jencey's Writer's Corner

  Kristin Harmel’s book The Sweetness of Forgetting was her first World War II novel.  Recently, her publisher rereleased the book in 2022 with special features and updates.  I am a fan of Kristin Harmel’s books.  I found the recipes interesting and learned about some of the updates that Kristin made in this latest edition. Synopsis: “At thirty-six , Hope McKenna-Smith is no stranger to bad news. She lost her mother to cancer, her husband left her, and her bank account is nearly depleted. Her own dreams of becoming a lawyer long gone, she’s running a failing family bakery on Cape Cod and raising a troubled preteen. Now, Hope’s beloved French-born grandmother Mamie is drifting away in a haze of Alzheimer’s. But in a rare moment of clarity, Mamie realizes that unless she tells Hope about the past, the secrets she has held on to for so many years will soon be lost forever. Tantalizingly, she reveals mysterious snippets of a tragic history in WWII Paris. Armed with a sc...

  Have you ever had questions about your past?  A mystery that you couldn’t solve?  Choices that were made that affected you greatly in how you lived your life.  Colette Marceau has many questions about the past and also about preserving her family’s legacy.  You can read her story in Kristin Harmel’s The Stolen Life of Collette Marceau.  Synopsis:  “Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, Annabel: take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance. But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an exquisite diamond b...

  Have you ever noticed how choices impact relationships?  In Kristin Harmel’s novel When We Meet Again, the choices of the characters directly affect the story.  It is a story of strong women.   This story is told through the events of World War II.  Did you know that there were prisoner camps that housed enemy prisoners beyond the Japanese?  About the Book:  “Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad walked out on the family when she was just a kid, her mom died when she was eighteen, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she’s laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely adrift…until the day she receives a beautiful painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. She recognizes the woman as her grandmother, but the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, “He never stopped loving her...” Curious, Emily begins to do some digg...

Kristin Harmel has recently released her latest book to the world The Book of Lost Names.  I cannot wait to read it myself.  I have very much enjoyed her other books.  Kristin needs our help!  Due to COVID-19, there has been a delay in printing more copies of  The Book of Lost Names.   Many of the bookstores around the country's shelves are empty. We all want to be able to share more stories from Kristin in the future.  Purchasing a copy of her book ensures that we readers will hear more from Kristin Harmel in the future.  She is relaunching her book starting tomorrow. I will include some buy links:   Bookshop.org                             Barnes and Noble Books-A-Million                       Amazon         Simon & Schuster Here is a synopsis of the book  "Eva Traube Abrams, a s...

Thank you to Goodreads and Gallery books for a copy of The Room on Rue Amelie by Kristin Harmel.   I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. This book is the first time that I have had the opportunity to read   a book by Kristin Harmel.   I had heard many good recommendations about her books, in the past.   I love a good historical fiction book that includes mystery and intrigue or more specifically the resistance during World War II in Paris.   Can she make this as exciting as the Nightingale by Kristin Hannah? Kristin Harmel Facebook     Twitter     Instagram Synopsis: When newlywed Ruby Henderson Benoit arrives in Paris in 1939 with her French husband Marcel, she imagines strolling arm in arm along the grand boulevards, awash in the golden afternoon light. But war is looming on the horizon, and as France falls to the Nazis, her marriage begins to splinter, too. Charlotte Dacher is ele...