Review: Honeymoon in Paris by Jojo Moyes

Title: Honeymoon in Paris: A Novella   

Author: Jojo Moyes 

Published: June 2013; Viking Adult

Format: E-book; 75 pages    

Source: Personal copy  

At the heart of Jojo Moyes’ heartbreaking new novel, The Girl You Left Behind,
are two haunting love stories—that of Sophie and Édouard Lefèvre in
France during the First World War, and, nearly a century later, Liv
Halston and her husband David.

Honeymoon in Paris takes place several years before the events to come in The Girl You Left Behind
when both couples have just married. Sophie is swept up in the glamour
of Belle Époque Paris but discovers that loving a celebrated artist like
Édouard Lefèvre brings undreamt of complications. Following in Sophie’s
footsteps a hundred years later, Liv, after a whirlwind romance, finds
her Parisian honeymoon is not quite the romantic getaway she had been
hoping for. . . .

This enchanting self-contained story will
have you falling in love with both young brides, and with Paris then and
now, and it is the perfect appetizer for the The Girl You Left Behind, a spellbinding story of love, devotion, and passion in the hardest of times.

My thoughts: This novella is actually an introduction to the characters in Jojo Moyes’ novel, The Girl You Left Behind. I didn’t find out about this novella until after I had already read TGYLB, but I still felt the need to read this one and I’m glad I did. 

Having already read the novel, reading the prequel gave me some more insight into the characters that I already had come to love. Being set some years before the novel, we get details that are not given in the book, so  we can see how the characters have changed. As the title implies, both couples, though years apart, are on their honeymoons, but as they quickly find out, it is not all roses as they imagined it might be.

I’m actually glad I read this after reading the novel – I found that already knowing the full story and then reading this novella gave me a better appreciation for the characters earlier lives. If you’ve read both books, what do you think? Which would you have preferred to have read first?