Three LOVE-ly Novels for February

Valentine's Day and love stories go hand in hand. So, for your February reading pleasure, here are three very good novels each with a different love story to tell.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

I loved this book. I thought the author did an incredible job of showing the raw emotional sides of a marriage as it slowly unravels. We follow the courtship and marriage of a young Ernest Hemingway to a sheltered spinster nine years his senior and accompany them as they make their way to Paris to follow the writer's dream. The love they have for each other, however, proves no match for the decadent lifestyle of 1920s Paris. Full of lush period detail, this book made me want to listen to a Josephine Baker CD and sip a glass of vin rouge. As on Amazon reviewer so aptly writes:

"At the end of Ernest Hemingway's memoir, A Moveable Feast , he writes of his first wife, Hadley Richardson, "I wish I had died before I loved anyone but her." After their divorce, Hemingway marries three more times, each one prompt to follow, like serial wives. This is the story of the woman that loved him before he was famous."

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This book is unlike anything I have read before. The author describes the scents, smells and sites of the black and white circus, known as The Night Circus, in such detail that it is truly a feast for the senses. The Night Circus or Le Cirque des Reves arrives without notice and is open only from dusk to dawn. We slowly learn that it is also the playing field for a very serious game between two young illusionists who have been bound at an early age to a contest that pits them against each other to the death. The trouble is, they fall in love. A magical story that is an adult delight to read.

The third LOVE-ly novel is a Bellwether Prize winner. The Bellwether Prize is awarded biennially by Barbara Kingsolver for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice. My review can be read over on Helen's Reads.