This novel has been compared to Eat, Pray, Love, a memoir that I absolutely hated. Thankfully for The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, this novel was everything that Eat, Pray, Love wasn't. It had characters that I cared about and a plot that actually moved. By the end of the book I wasn't happy it was over; I was sad there weren't more pages to read.

Two years after her husbands tragic death, Heidi is still struggling to come to terms with it. Then, when her family's home in southern France is damaged in a kitchen fire, her mother convinces her to take her young son and jaded-with-life niece to France to begin repairs and renovations. There Heidi will learn more about herself and her relationship with her deceased husband, her son will grow, and her niece will harbor a life-changing secret that will bring the family together in a way they've never been together before.

Heidi's character was not selfish. It would only be natural for her to take on a sense of "woe is me" because her husband was gone, but she was also focused on her son, whom she loved with all her heart. The characters in this novel are real, believable and deep. The scenery is gorgeous and themes throughout the novel are woven together. It was complex and beautiful.

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Boring. I made myself finish it but not sure why. Over and over how much Heidi missed her husband, Henry. Henry, Henry, Henry. I'm not putting down her love for her husband and I can understand she misses him, but I don't need 402 pages of it.

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The main character is a grieving widow who is having a hard time moving on, and as impatient as a reader might be for her character to wake up and smell the roses at various points in the story, the author describes the thought processes of a person in that kind of stuck place really well. Maybe the story is a little trite in a way, but there are a few unexpected twists and turns that kept me reading it in just a few sittings. An enjoyable read.

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