Reading travel memoirs are a great way to experience armchair traveling. I love Europe and was quickly attracted to the book cover of this memoir. It was a fun read. Check it out and the giveaway too!

Book Details:

Book Title: Are We French Yet? Keith & Val’s Adventures In Provence by Keith Van Sickle
Category: Adult Non-Fiction, 157 pages
Genre: Travel memoir
Publisher: Dresher Publishing
Release date: December 15, 2018
Content Rating: PG

Book Description:

Can Two Americans Really Become French? Val and Keith turned their lives upside down when they quit their jobs and moved to Provence. But they wondered: Can we fit in? And maybe become French ourselves? Follow their adventures as they slowly unlock the mysteries of France… – Is it true that French people are like coconuts? – Can you learn to argue like a French person? – What books have changed French lives? – Most important of all, how do you keep your soup from exploding? There’s more to becoming French than just learning the language. If you want the inside scoop on la belle France, you won’t want to miss this delightful book!

Reading travel memoirs are a great way to experience armchair traveling. I love Europe and was quickly attracted to the book cover of this memoir that promised some humorous anecdotes of Keith and his wife Val's adventures while living in France. I was right. I was entertained from the first chapter to the last.

Are We French Yet? is a catchy title to a delightful, funny, and easy-to-read book with large font and short chapters. As a matter of fact, I breezed through it and wished I was in Provence sipping wine with Keith and Val, on a picnic, while listening to their humorous experiences of adapting to life in a small town in southern France. A lot of times, as I was reading, I longed to experience the small town life (I'm a city girl) and to taste all the foods and wine mentioned throughout! My mouth watered at the descriptions of some meals they shared with friends. Ah...the homemade bouillabaisse...I hope to try it one day.

Van Sickle discusses a variety of topics (besides food and wine) such as tackling a new language, the societal and behavioral rules and their nuances, such as when entering the waiting room of a doctor's office, France's politics, shopping in a small town, fashion (the famous French scarf), books, biking, making friends, and the blunders of Americans learning to live in another country.

This was a fun book to read and I would recommend it to anyone who loves memoirs, France, traveling and the expat life.

To read more reviews, please visit Keith Van Sickle's page on France Book Tours.

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Author: Kristen Beddard

Category: Adult Non-fiction; 352 pages

Genre: Memoir, Recipes

Publisher: Sourcebooks
Release date: May 6, 2016 

Content Rating: G

Book Description:

A memoir of love, life, and recipes from the woman who brought kale to the City of Light. The story of how one expat woman left her beloved behind when she moved to France - her beloved kale, that is. Unable to find le chou kale anywhere upon moving to the City of Light with her new husband, and despite not really speaking French, Kristen Beddard launched a crusade to single-handedly bring kale to the country of croissants and cheese. Infused with Kristen’s recipes and some from French chefs, big and small (including Michelin star chef Alain Passard) Bonjour Kale is more than just a leafy-green. It is a humorous, heartfelt memoir of how Kristen finds herself in a new home and how she, kale, and France collide. 

Buy the book: 

Amazon  ~ Barnes & Noble 

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My Review:

Reviewed by Laura Fabiani

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Kristen Beddard's memoir and for several reasons too. I'm choosy about the memoirs I read, and was immediately attracted to this one. It's about a young woman and her adventures with food, love and Paris. It's about the expat life, and how she had to adapt to being a newlywed in a foreign country. It reminded me of my parents's immigrant situation when they were young and moved to Canada from Italy. It's also about Kristen's love of the leafy green vegetable kale and how she pursued a passionate project to make kale available in France.

Kristen is a great writer, capturing my interest with her humor and descriptions of her life in New York, the Parisian streets, markets and way of life, interspersed with French words and expressions which I understood. I loved how she included the history of kale, how it became popular and how she reintroduced it in France. Here in Quebec, kale is called chou frisé and is easily found everywhere.

I also enjoyed the recipes and was happy that Kristen included tips on how to use kale. I have made kale chips several times, but they never came out as good as when I tried Kristen's recipe. And the key to a good kale salad? You have to massage the dressing into the kale so it marinates the leaves. It's true that this makes the salad tastier. Ever since reading this book, I've made more use of kale instead of just using it daily in my smoothies.  And oh, Kristen's descriptions of food and meals at the restaurants interspersed throughout the book made my mouth water.

Best of all, I enjoyed Kristen's journey in pursuing something she was passionate about. She left her home and job in America to follow her husband to a country where she did not speak the language. She reinvented herself after going through times of doubt, vulnerability, and self-reflection. She was courageous and accomplished something worthwhile, something that had great meaning in her life and that taught her important things about herself and those around her, including the people and culture of France.

Her passion and enthusiasm for kale helped her make friends with others who came to understand her quest -- farmers and chefs. My dad, a gentleman farmer and lover of verdura who owns a large garden plot, started growing kale a few years ago after he learned the nutritious value of kale. Farmers are great people to know. They love the land and growing food is their life in more ways than one. I enjoyed reading about Kristen's interaction with them.

If you love memoirs set in France, like stories about the expat life, are a foodie or love to cook, then you will love Bonjour Kale. It's heartwarming, inspiring, fun to read and it's a clean read. It's one of the best books I've read this year.

To read more reviews, please visit Kristen Beddard's page on France Book Tours.

The Kale Project:

Title: Death at the Paris Exposition
Genre: Historical mystery, 276 pages 

Publisher: Allium Press of Chicago
Buy the book: Amazon  ~  Allium Press of Chicago

Interview with Frances McNamara

Book Description:

When Grace Hansen finds a box belonging to her beloved grandfather, she has no idea it holds the key to his past—and to long-buried family secrets. In the box are his World War I diaries and a cryptic note addressed to her. Determined to solve her grandfather’s puzzle, Grace follows his diary entries across towns and battle sites in northern France, where she becomes increasingly drawn to a charming French man—and suddenly aware that someone is following her…

Through her grandfather’s vivid writing and Grace’s own travels, a picture emerges of a man very unlike the one who raised her: one who watched countless friends and loved ones die horrifically in battle; one who lived a life of regret. But her grandfather wasn’t the only one harboring secrets, and the more Grace learns about her family, the less she thinks she can trust them.



Time and Regret is a well-written touching story with a dual timeline. Grace Hansen's story takes place in 1991 New York. She is a successful woman who works in marketing for an insurance company and is the mother of two teenage sons and dealing with her recent divorce. She finds a tackle box belonging to her late grandfather in the attic that contains his WWI diaries and a puzzle left for her to solve. This propels her to trace his footsteps by going to all the different towns and places in France where he served.

Time and Regret is also the story of Martin Devlin, Grace's grandfather, who in Feb 1915 enlisted in the war and goes from a young soldier to a grief-stricken hardened colonel after losing most of his friends and platoon on the field. Both stories alternate between chapters and are brought together toward the end as we come to realize that Martin has done something he regrets that he wants his granddaughter to rectify.

I became so immersed in this novel that I read it in two days. I enjoyed both stories but initially found Martin's story somewhat difficult as I felt that I was dropped into the war scenes and strategies and did not have time to get to know the characters. But soon enough, I was racing through the chapters because I was invested and wanted to know how the two stories would merge.

It is a testament to this author's writing skills that she could so easily transition from contemporary life in the sleepy towns of France to that of war-torn France in 1915. I thoroughly enjoyed traveling with Grace as she explored the war memorials in the towns where her grandfather experienced life in a totally different way. On the one hand we have a middle-aged woman at a pivotal point in her life who rediscovers herself and finds love again and on the other hand we have a young soldier living the hellish life month after month of sleeping in muddy trenches with the smell of rotting flesh and the constant sound of shells and gun fire directed at him.

Both stories brought out a variety of emotions in me. The beauty of quiet life in small French towns and the horror of war and the psychological impact it had on the men who fought relentlessly. The mystery of the puzzle that Martin left for Grace added intrigue, adventure and danger. The romance was well done and added spice to Grace's story.

I was so pleased to discover that M.K. Todd is a Canadian author. This is her third novel and I would now love to read her previous books. This book will be listed in my Best Reads of 2016 post. Highly recommended to lovers of historical fiction and women's fiction.

Buy the Book:

You can find it on Amazon.com,  Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk and other Amazon sites as well as Barnes & Noble, IndieBound and Indigo (audio book only).

Disclosure: Thanks to the author and France Book Toursf or sending me this book for review. I was not compensated in any other way, nor told how to rate or review this product.

Global giveaway open internationally:
5 winners will receive a print copy of this book.

Interview with Paulita Kincer:

We spent the summer with their grandparents on the beaches of Corsica, in a manor house in the countryside of France, and in an apartment just outside of Paris. Oh, the adventures I had. One day, I traveled with the girls’ uncle (a single doctor) in a sailboat across part of the Mediterranean to a secluded beach, which he didn’t tell me was a nude beach. But when we got there, he dropped trou. It just served to feed my major crush on him.

LCR: I've read that one of your favorite books is The Girl You Left Behind by JoJo Moyes. I loved that novel too! What have you read lately that you've loved? 

PK: I recently read Paris is Always a Good Idea by Nicolas Barreau, and I finished it in a day. It also led me to go in search of his previous novels. It’s a sweet novel set in Paris with a little bit of magical realism.

LCR: One of my favorite feel-good movies is French Kiss with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. Do you have any favorite movies set in France?

PK: It might be cliché, but I love Midnight in Paris. All of the beautiful scenes of Paris, and that je ne sais quoi feeling that Gil has – an inkling that writing in France would make him a success. I have that same longing – if only. And, of course, I love that being in Paris gave Gil the clarity to break up with his awful fiancée. I broke up with my boyfriend after my long trip to France, too.

LCR: I loves Midnight in Paris too! What is the most courageous thing you've ever done?

PK: I have a courageous plan that will hopefully take place next year. My husband and I plan to move to France, and I think leaving my family behind to pursue my dream will be the most courageous thing I’ll ever do. My children will technically be adults, ages 25, 23 and 21 next year, but they frequently still need the reassurance that their parents are there if they should fall. I know that my husband and I could wait, but what if one of them gets married or starts having babies? Will we ever leave? So next year, we plan to sell our house and buy a house in the South of France. Just imagine the stories I’ll be able to write then.

LCR: What is the scariest thing that's ever happened to you?

One of the scariest things that ever happened to me was losing my two-year-old son. One evening, I drove my 4-year-old son to an event, leaving my husband with the other two children. My husband tried to calm a temper tantrum by my daughter, and he left Tucker downstairs. We didn’t think Tucker could get out the back door by himself, but he did. When my husband realized that Tucker wasn’t in the house, he rushed out the back door looking for him. He didn’t find him in the backyard so hurried around to the front. 

Halfway down the street, he caught a glimpse of our Red Flyer wagon – abandoned. When he reached the wagon, he saw Tucker’s clothes inside. Panicked now, he began to run down the street calling Tucker’s name. A cross street lay at the bottom of the hill, then a very busy street and a cemetery. As my husband neared the corner, an old woman came around the corner, holding Tucker’s hand. She spoke calmly to the naked boy as she walked him back toward home. That story could have ended much differently, so I’m thankful that it didn’t.

LCR: The strangest? 

PK: My husband has grown-up nieces, and in the past few years, as they’ve had children, I’ve spent some time babysitting. Caroline was not quite two one day staying at our house when she pointed at a picture on our wall. “That’s Grandpa,” she said.

She was right. A picture hung on the wall of my husband’s father wearing his World War II uniform. He had died 16 years before. I figured her own grandmother might have shown her pictures.

Then she said, “He can talk to me, but he can’t pick me up.”

I definitely got chills.

A few years later, I pointed to the picture and asked her if she knew who it was. She didn’t remember.

LCR: What is the best thing about being a writer? The hardest?

PK: I like creating characters and letting them do things I could never do. Sometimes, that’s just falling in love again or having first kisses. I’ve been married to my husband for 26 years now. I love when I think of a good description or simile. Here’s one from Paris Runaway that I liked: “Chose him for what?” I asked. Each word sounded like the chiming of a clock, as if midnight had arrived, and I was only delaying the inevitable – that Cinderella moment when everything changed.

Sometimes the hardest thing about being a writer is just sitting down and writing. With publishing, a thousand other jobs appear – blog interviews, tweets, Facebook. They all take time that could be spent writing. But what’s the point of writing if no one reads it? So I have to publicize my books too.

LCR: If you could travel back in time, where would you go?

PK: When I was a kid, I always wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’d write adventures about starting across the United States in a covered wagon. As an adult, that seems much less tempting. I’m too practical thinking about bathrooms and penicillin. But at the same time that our country had people bumping across the Plains states to the West, in France, Claude Monet created beautiful impressionist paintings. Maybe I could go back to the same time, but rather than ending up in a covered wagon, I could wander the colorful gardens of Claude Monet, the place where he created his gorgeous water lily paintings, and I could sit amidst his large family and hear the laughter in that bright yellow dining room filled with Japanese art. We’ve visited Monet’s Gardens in Giverny twice. He lived there from 1883-1926. The house and gardens are entrancing now, as I’m sure they were then.

LCR: What do you want your readers to remember the most about you? 

PK: I try to make sure that my novels are relatable. The characters are people with regular problems and suddenly they have a chance to escape their everyday lives. Sometimes that makes the problems disappear, but sometimes it makes the problems worse. I hope the adventure that my characters set out on make my novels fun and believable, while giving readers a chance to escape.

Thanks so much for the interview questions, which really stretched my brain. I’m honored to be included on your blog.

LCR: Thank you, Paulita! It's been a pleasure chatting with you.



Paulita Kincer has an M.A. in journalism from American University. She has traveled to France 11 times, and still finds more to lure her back. She currently teaches college English and lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her three children, two cats and one husband. Visit her website www.paulitakincer.com and her blog at http://www.paulita-ponderings.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter @paulitakincer Like her Facebook page at Paulita Kincer Writer. Email paulita@paulitakincer.com


Visit each blogger on the tour: tweeting about the giveaway everyday of the Tour will give you 5 extra entries each time! [just follow the directions on the entry-form] Global giveaway: 2 winners, choice of print or digital copy of this book.

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