Before I Met You

Lisa Jewell is one of those authors I've been reading for years, we've almost grown up together. Since Ralph's Party, 31 Dream Street and Vince & Joy she's never failed to deliver a great read. It's been a few years now since I'd read one of her books but decided I'd delve back in with Before I Met You.

It's a wonderful story about Betty and her step grandmother Arlette whom she cares for in her old age in a crumbling house in a cliff top in Guernsey. After Arlette's death Betty sets out to find a mysterious Clara Pickle to whom Arlette has left her life savings. Betty decides to move to London in search of the mysterious Miss Pickle and finds her own adventure along the way.

This is a much more mature Lisa Jewell than the one I remember from a few years ago, her writing almost less frothy and whimsical and more based in solid relationships and emotion. The story flits between Betty's London and Arlette's London in the 1920's and Jewell weaves the story seamlessly and enticingly.

Arlette's story is a joy to read, incredibly captivating and one I could have happily spent the whole book immersed in. That is not to detract from Betty's journey but it is less exciting and lacks some of the glamour of the 1920's jazz bars and post war politics.

A truly joyful book and a wonderful read. Jewell keeps the reader involves right through the book until the very end. Well worth a read and it certainly won't be so long until I read another.

I've read and enjoyed Lisa Jewell's books for more than ten years, and I highly recommend both One-Hit Wonder and A Friend of the Family. But Before I Met You left me cold. Jewell does a good job of portraying the combination of wide-eyed wonder, tinge of fear, and naive determination that both Betty, in the 1990s, and Arlette, in the 1920s, feel as young women on their own in a big city for the first time. She also keeps the pages turning to find out the mystery behind the beneficiary in Arlette's will whom Betty is determined to find. But the narration is strangely distant from the characters, and I never felt fully connected to them. The object of Arlette's passion is more of a paragon than a real person. It was difficult to believe, even in those short "enlightened" years between the World Wars, that almost nobody batted an eyelash when Arlette became the lover of a black musician. In fact, none of the male characters work, with the exception of the taciturn young man who is one of the first people Betty encounters in her new life. All in all, not my favorite Lisa Jewell by far.