The Light Behind The Window: A breathtaking story of love and war from the bestselling author of The Seven Sisters series

Product Information

I know this is fiction and heaven knows I am not a very big fan of "gritty" realism, but there does have to be some detail to evoke a sense of reality and place. I can't find any of that here. The author tosses in a few names of some actual people from SOE, but that's where it stops. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Italian Bancarella Prize, the Lovely Books Award in Germany, and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. In 2020 she received the Dutch Platinum Award for sales over 300,000 copies for a single novel in one year – a prize last won by J. K. Rowling for Harry Potter. This story, of epic proportions, is a must-read. Both set in France and England, it is a heartfelt story that will pull at your heartstrings and often confound you.

I wasn't sorry, it was such a touching and gripping story i couldnt stop listening to it! You really get the characters and feel their emotions, The narrator read it so well too, highly recommended. And the husband: Still can't figure out why he married her. I mean, if it was just "her money" that'd be one thing. But we're told it was to steal a specific book. For money. But the book isn't really THAT valuable, comparatively. I mean, it's a ton of money to me, but in context it isn't. I don't think so, anyway, because our novel isn't actually sure how much this MacGuffin is worth. It's not even the most valuable book in the chateau's library. There were plenty of other objects he could have stolen, since Emilie didn't even know what she owned. The book trots this "steal one specific book" explanation out at the end and even tries to lampshade it but it just doesn't make sense. Air raids are boring to sit through apparently but don't damage anything, apparently, and travel is smellier but apparently everyone does it. Cousins from Vichy France apparently head to Paris for holidays without any difficulty. A few month after the war Constance wants to go home so she just does, without difficulty. In reality it took people months to find passage home.

Francamente, encontré la historia de Emilie un tanto floja y poco creíble, con un personaje central muy endeble y sin consistencia, mientras que la de Connie y el entorno de la Francia ocupada me pareció bastante mejor descrito, además de más interesante. La resolución final, que une por fin a las dos familias protagonistas, aunque bien narrada, quizás haya sido demasiado previsible (O tal vez es que yo haya leído demasiadas novelas de temática similar). I have read most of Lucinda Riley’s books including the Seven Sisters series. They are all very good novels but I really enjoyed this one. The events surrounding World War Two are particularly moving and realistic. Highly recommended.

No habiendo leído aún “Hothouse Flower”, me decidí por conocer a Lucinda Riley a través de esta novela, de la que también había escuchado buenas referencias. The incredible bravery of the SOE, the Resistance and the ordinary French men and women is movingly told; I'm a Brit used to war stories told from home soil and am ashamed to say how little I know about day to day occupied France. That's not to say this is a gritty war book though, far from it. There are some tense moments, but they're dealt with 'nicely' with only hints of the horrors that happen off-screen. The main body of this book is how the long-lost secrets of the past affect the future generations.I love Lucinda's writing, intelligence and skill in describing works of art. She's also a wonderful poet. Emilie de la Martinieres is there when her glamorous mother draws her final breath. As the end comes, Emilie realises what a task she now has to face, as the sole remaining heir she has to sort a flat in Paris, her mother's jewels and other remnants of her famous and glamorous life as well as the Chateau in the south of France, which her mother hated, but Emilie loved as a child when her father was alive.

TW; rape (I put it in one of the spoilers, but just in case someone wants to go through and read them all.) This is by far my favorite Lucinda Riley book. I loved her detail about the French and English countryside and absolutely loved the specifics of the ancestry of Emilee's family. Digging into a family's history is my favorite historical thing to do. The ending is wonderful. This one is classified as historical fiction and that it is. I have no qualms with that. However, that’s probably my only non-objection to this one. Lucinda Riley attempts to interweave the stories of Emilie de la Martinières, a young French woman who recently inherited a vast fortune after her mother’s death, and Constance Carruthers, a young English woman who was sent to France during World War II as a special operative. Riley then tells the reader how these two women, decades apart, are intertwined. The potential this story had was immense but unfortunately it remains just that - potential. As a lover of things Provençal and interested in the role of the French Resistance, this book was a favorite.Sebastian's family had some connection to Emilie's chateau and vineyard, and the winemakers on the estate knew what that connection was. The account of the important family connection is revealed through Constance's life during WWII and her connection to the de la Martinieries' family. But, did Sebastian suddenly appear and help Emilie because of the family connection or because he was interested in the valuable paintings inside her estates and most of all her family inheritance? THE LAVENDER GARDEN had wonderful characters that were believable as well as characters that you would want to share a day with. Being in a beautiful chateau with a vineyard, being in Paris and a small French village, being in an English castle, and being with characters you definitely will bond with made the book even more appealing.

From the Sunday Times best-selling author of the Seven Sisters series, Lucinda Riley's The Light Behind the Window is a breathtaking and intense story of love, war and, above all, forgiveness. Lucinda Riley was born in 1965 in Ireland and, after an early career as an actress in film, theatre and television, wrote her first novel aged twenty-four. Her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and continue to strike an emotional chord with cultures all around the world. The Seven Sisters series specifically has become a global phenomenon, creating its own genre.Yet again Lucinda Riley has created and weaved a story which has you gripped from the beginning to the end. You have to keep reading, you have to know what happens you have to know if love will conquer all, if war will end, if all wrongs will be righted and that the light will shine again from behind the window where it has been hiding for many years of the main characters. Emilie de la Martinieres is the sole surviving member of her family and is left with a chateau with vineyards and another home in Paris. Both homes are filled with memories and contents worth millions. But, the millions won't be Emile's because of the debt her mother mounted over the years. Emilie needs to decide if she should sell or keep the chateau. She never had to deal with finances and was doing it alone until a complete stranger, Sebastian, came on the scene. Castles, hidden rooms, families, World War II, and history coming alive as past and present blend together for an incredible, marvelously detailed read. Forced to surrender her identity and all ties to her homeland, Constance finds herself drawn into a complex web of deception, the repercussions of which will affect generations to come . . . South of France, present day. After the death of her glamorous, distant mother, Emilie de la Martiniéres finds herself alone in the world – and sole inheritor of her grand childhood home.