Not Quite a Sequel

French Kissing by Catherine Sanderson
A few weeks ago I blogged how I'd been lucky enough to receive a signed copy of this book. The author posted on her blog that she had a few copies sitting around her apartment that needed a good home, and since I had just finished her first book it seemed like perfect timing.

French Kissing is a work of fiction, compared with her first, Petite Anglaise, which is a memoir. Except they're eerily similar. Both tell the story of an Englishwoman living in Paris. In both she has a young daughter with a Frenchmen. While her first tells how she left her daughter's father, this novel tells the story of Sally, who after leaving her daughter's father searches for love on-line. And if I remember correctly from the blog, Catherine did fall in love and marry a second Frenchmen whom she met online.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened. But by calling this a novel, it gave Catherine far more freedom. This way she could write without being trapped by events that actual happened or without feeling guilty she could alter facts to better the story. It is interesting that in real life Catherine left her boyfriend to have an affair. But in the novel, Sally instead has been wronged by her cheating boyfriend.

It did take me a while to get into the book, but once I got to the second half it read rather quickly. What I loved about the book, is that it filled in details from a part off Catherine's life that wasn't really blogged about. After all the craziness that happened during the time of her first memoir, she stopped writing about her real life. But this was almost a window into that time of her life, so we can have an idea of what happened without her actually admitting to anything.

I did wind up really enjoying the book, although only wish she was still blogging. As I said before in my review of her memoir, I understand why she's stopped blogging since it brought on so many life changes, but I still would love to be reading her words and hearing her stories regularly.

4/5