Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada, May 7, 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 318

Rating: 3/5 stars

Summary (From Goodreads):

The New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the “captivating, richly drawn” (Woman’s World) The Paris Library returns with a brilliant new novel based on the true story of Jessie Carson—the American librarian who changed the literary landscape of France.

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen—children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.

1987: When NYPL librarian and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing reference to Jessie Carson in the archives, she becomes consumed with learning her fate. In her obsessive research, she discovers that she and the elusive librarian have more in common than their work at New York’s famed library, but she has no idea their paths will converge in surprising ways across time.

My Review:

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for the copy of this book.
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Read if you like: dual timelines/perspectives, WW1 fiction
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The book goes back and forth between Jessie, a young librarian who goes to France during WW1 to help rebuild the countryside, and Wendy in 1987, a librarian who comes across a mention of Jessie.
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I loved the idea of this book, but it was very slow paced and I struggled to get into it. The dual timeline also wasn’t my favourite. I really wanted to love it but I struggled!