Victoria Adams is an innocent, sexually ignorant fifteeen-going-on-sixteen-year-old English girl coming of age in a world before there were mobile phones, email, or social media. She spends a long, hot summer on an isolated and enchanted island called Chantoiseaux off the north coast of Brittany. She is there is improve her French, but she learns much more than she bargained for,
She falls in love with the charismatic, charming Géri, best friend of the gay son of the house, Pascal. Both his parents are artists and Victoria finds herself in a bohemian household which is a far cry from the conventional, suburban home she is used to.
In the few short weeks that she spends in the chateau, also named Chantoiseaux, inhabited as a holiday home by this uninhibited family that nonetheless plays by its own rules, Victoria comes of age in many ways, in particular realising the many forms that love can take. The idyll ends in tragedy, but Victoria has also learned resilience.
This book is written through Victoria’s eyes, but it is not intended as a book for young teens (although hopefully some of them would enjoy it too). It is in some ways a book about proto-feminism, or, as the French would say, avant la lettre, but it can also be read as a rather quirky good read.
If you like the sound of the book, and are an agent or a publisher. please get in touch with me via my contact page. (Please note: I am not interested in self-publishing.)
If you just like the sound of it, and would like to know if it gets published, you can do the same, and I will let you know if it succeeds.