Where Do Broken Hearts Go? (Book Review: The Provence Cure For The Broken Hearted, Bridget Asher)

Where do broken hearts go? Apparently they go to Provence, France. Heidi is heartbroken. She just lost her husband, and has been struggling with it as she starts to raise her son, Aboott, alone. After some manipulation from her mother, she flies to France at a little village near Aix en Provence, France, to fix the summer house she used to vacation to when she was a kid. This seems to be a perfect setting for a romance, right? So of course, she gets to meet the French man of her dreams, but can she let go of the hurts in her past and fall in love again? The novel has all the elements of something I would love, and I only liked it. I have been to Aix en Provence, so I knew exactly the region where this novel is set. I remember the one thing that I noticed in Aix en Provence was that there was art everywhere: it seemed to be an in integral part of the city. I wish I could have felt that in the descriptions of the locale. But Bridget Asher concentrated on the patisseries and she was accurate. I remember going to one and getting macaroons and trying to desperately decide what to get from the beautiful concoctions they had. But back to the book, I wish I felt more the love story between Heidi and Julien, the childhood friend of hers from France. I felt that there was just too much of her reminiscence of her husband, that even as the story was ending, I still never felt that Heidi ever let go. And the story line of Charlotte felt too neatly tied up: the resolution felt just a little forced after all the build-up. Still, there's  a lot to like about the book: the majestic descriptions of the mountains, the internal element of the narrator, and it's France, it's Provence! I have had a few broken hearts over the years and it sure would have been so romantic to mend them in the beauty of that locale. 

Bc-5