What do readers think of Amour Provence by Constance Leisure? Write your own review.

I found this book confusing. When I first started reading and got to a new chapter, I wondered, "what, who are these people." Each chapter seemed to be a stand alone short story and it wasn't until near the end of the book that almost all of the stories came together. However, some characters issues were never resolved and seemed to be just thrown into the story.
It was interesting enough to keep reading, and when I finished I went back to reread some of the chapters. This helped me understand the book better.

I wanted to love this book. I liked it, but didn't love it. The concept of different storylines and going back and forward in time always intrigues me with a book. Even though this book held my interest, I didn't yearn to pick it up each day.

The descriptions and settings were good. The character descriptions were good. It was easy to pick the characters that you liked and the ones that you didn't. Constance did a great job in her writing semantics. I wanted the stories to move a little faster.

However, I loved the ending. It was a little unexpected.
I would recommend this book to friends and family.

This is a series of interconnected stories that all take place in very rural and wildly beautiful Provence. They occur in different time periods. Some serve as background for other stories and characters. I appreciated the vivid descriptions of rustic Provence and the arduous life lived there. The stories and characters were hard to connect at times and didn't flow. The description on the back cover was very inaccurate.

To me, this book seems to be a collection of vignettes about different people living in the wine country of Provence. I tried, I really tried over and over to get into this book. I kept reading although I was not enjoying it and then started skimming. I thought if I skimmed and got a sense of the over- all story and purpose of the book, I could go back and enjoy the experience of reading it but nothing seemed connected. I felt the same way about the book as I do when I look at an abstract painting. No matter how hard I try, I cannot see what other people see in such paintings.

My problem might have been that I …more expected this book to be a story of two old friends who re-discover each other many years later. That tale is in there, from what I could tell, but there is much more ink given to tales about other people. I am not even sure I should call the two old friends the main characters of the book.

I was partly attracted to offer to read the book in exchange for an honest review because I anticipated that those two characters would live through the Nazi occupation of France. (Historical fiction is my favorite type of book.) There was indeed a section of one chapter in the middle of the book about another character's unhappy experience during the Nazi occupation but as I read it I was still wondering about the life of the two main characters during the same period of time.

On a positive side, I will say the prejudice in France encountered by the Algerian workers did interest me.

To conclude, I blame myself for becoming involved in the process of reviewing this book rather than blaming the author for her effort to give us an enjoyable book. I am anxious to read reviews by other readers to see if I am truly alone in giving this book such a low rating. I hope for this author's sake that others love it.

p.s. I am curious about the title: "Amour Provence". Does the word "Amour" in the title mean love as in "I love Provence" or maybe "Love in Provence"? I searched to see if Amour was a village in Provence. It does not appear that it is. I did find a cottage in Provence that is called Amour Provence and think possibly that is the name of the author's own farmhouse???? (less)