A French Wedding by Hannah Tunnicliffe

I just finished A French Wedding by Hannah Tunnifclife, today actually! I had to hop on here and post my review while I was still lost in the French town dreaming of warm bread and cheeses.

A French Wedding is the story of a group of friends who come together for a friends 40th birthday, bringing with them their life struggles and accomplishments as well as some baggage from the past. At the same time, this story is about Juliette, a Parisian chef who loses both parents within a year from each other and moves back into her childhood home in a small French village as she tries to cope with her loss. In doing so, she finds herself working for Max as housekeeper/personal chef and the leader of that group of friends.

Taking place over the course of a weekend, A French Wedding is one of those books that make you feel like you got to know everyone just enough in the book to maybe want to keep reading more about them after its over. I'm not sure if this was Hannah Tunnicliffe's intention or not, but I felt like I got to know each character only briefly, even Juliette. I would've like to know her better and in doing so, feel like I was really rooting for her in the end (and in the final chapter that takes place one year later).

I loved the descriptions of the small French village, of the food Juliette was cooking and of the relationships between the friends. The flashbacks definitely helped fill in some details. All in all, this was a fairly low key story that left me feeling mostly satisfied when it was finished. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a story set in a beautiful foreign place, where good food abounds (so many wonderful descriptions!) and friendships are at the heart of the story.

I rated this 3.5 stars on Goodreads.


A French Wedding by Hannah Tunnicliffe
320 pages
Published by Doubleday