My 2010 bookcrossing review:

I enjoyed this one. Not quite as good as Girl with a Pearl Earring, but I thought it was better than Burning Bright. Was this her first book? One of the comments on the back cover makes me think it was.

This was back to addictive Chevalier reading and it didn't take me that long to get through the book as I had to know what happened. This story is set in two time periods - modern and 1700s in France and Switzerland. The connection being two red headed women who are related. The red head of the past was Isobelle, who married into a family, Tournier, who did not appear to have any respect for her and enjoyed tormenting her. The woman of today is Ella Turner from America (the family changed the name to Turner when they moved to the States) who has just moved to France with her husband who has taken a French architectural project. She is stuck in a country where she doesn't know anyone, doesn't have a job (she is a midwife but will have to retrain to be allowed to work in France) and is struggling with the language. The locals aren't overly welcoming and she feels isolated. I've never been to France, but I have lived abroad so I could relate to her experiences there. And also when you're struggling with the language to begin with and trying to speak it, yet people will reply in English no matter how much you continue in the native language - also very annoying. To deal with the boredom, she decides to research her family tree, which eventually leads her to Isobelle.