Jojo Moyes – The Girl You Left Behind: The No 1 bestselling love story from Jojo Moyes

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You don’t want anything that’s going to pull the reader out of the narrative, no matter how briefly.

In this book, Sophie has to make a decision, I won't get into it because of spoilers, but the whole scene was so vivid and intense for me, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. I also appreciated the fact that Sophie wasn't able to move past her husband,whereas Liv could eventually, it shows us that even in similar circumstances people might chose differently,that of course doesn't mean that LIv loved David any less. Almost a century later, and Sophie's portrait hangs in the home of Liv Halston, a wedding gift from her young husband before he died. By the end, “The Girl You Left Behind” had become not just a picture-perfect historical novel, but also a true mystery-thriller.As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. When the newly appointed Kommandant decides that the family's hotel is the perfect place for his soldiers to eat, suspicions and whispers began to grow against Sophie. Almost a century later, Sophie’s portrait hangs in the home of Liv Halston, a wedding gift from her young husband before his sudden death. Moyes has become one of my favorite authors because her work is easy to read; it’s captivating, and it’s gratifying. Had I known that Jojo Moyes had twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award, “The Girl You Left Behind” would quickly have become the book I left behind — which would have been a big mistake.

When Liv takes a group of underprivileged students on a tour of Conaghy Securities, most of them had never considered architecture as an art form. While an incident with a suckling pig in disguise provides tension and humour, a grandfather clock hidden beneath a vegetable patch ("the town crunched underfoot with valuables that had been hastily buried under gardens and pathways") poignantly brings home people's desperation to retain heirlooms during war. Touching, moving, heart-breaking at times but heart-warming in the end, The Girl You Left Behind truly is one superb piece of writing. Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors. The most precious thing she has to remember him by is a painting that he created in her likeness, titled The Girl You Left Behind.In what should have been a book that could have sent my emotions reeling (WWI, sickness, starvation, death, capture, loneliness, bankruptcy, etc. Her need to hold on to this painting felt arbitrary and silly, especially when giving it up could have solved many, if not all, of her financial concerns. Liv fights passionately to keep the painting because of the connection to her deceased husband, but as she fights she learns Sophie's story and starts to fight for something else.