The Girl You Left Behind by JoJo Moyes

So. moyes has done it again. Sucked me into something I didn't think I would like. I am not a huge history person but I probably learned more about "war times" in fiction (gone with the wind, anyone?) then sitting in class in high school. But after reading Honeymoon in Paris and being dazzled by the two couples I had to take on this meaty tale. And am so glad I did. We have the Edouard and Sophie Lefevre who live in France and are doing their thing - eating drinking making love being jealous fighting loving...you know, the usual when war breaks out and he's taken away and Sophie goes to live with her sister. Edouard is an artist and is scraping his way in life but he's truly talented and paints his wife and the book centers seemingly around the painting entitled, The Girl You Left Behind---however we all know it's never about the painting. Then alternately a hundred years later we have Olivia "liv" Halston and her husband David who is a brilliant and work obsessed architect. He dies early on and Liv is grieving over him and loves the painting (TGYLB) because he bought it for her when they first got married. So we get invested in the war story, how sophie talks smack to the german soldiers who have taken over her hotel. And we pine for her lost husband hoping they will reunite and we also follow Liv and how she is slowly losing her shit because the house her husband designed and that she lives in is mortgaged to the tilt (or whatever that saying is) and she's of course still very sad 4 years on. Enter Michael Mccafferty who is assigned to find and restore the painting to it's "rightful owner" ---which is made complicated when Liv and michael get it on one drunken evening and well.... it's a pretty damned good story. go one.. if you have haven't read it yet DO IT!!! now for me, off to a rather depressing book about loss and suicide but is also rather good, 5 days left..but for comic relief (thank god for LM Montgomery---the Blue Castle is half way done...love that Valancy.)