Before I Met You

by Lisa Jewell

Having grown up on the quiet island of Guernsey, Betty Dean can't wait to start her new life in London. On a mission to find Clara Pickle - the mysterious beneficiary in her grandmother's will - she arrives in bustling and grungy 1990s Soho, filled with hope, excitement and dreams. In 1920s bonhemian London, Arlette - Betty's grandmother - is starting her new life in a time of post-war change. Beautiful and charismatic, Arlette is soon drawn into the hedonistic world of the Bright Young People. But less than two years later, tragedy strikes and she flees back to Guernsey for the rest of her life. As Betty searches for Clara, she is taken on a journey through Arlette's extraordinary time in London, uncovering a tale of love, loss and heartbreak. Will the secrets of Arlette's past help Betty on her path to happiness?

• ISBN10: 0753191547
• ISBN13: 9780753191545
• Publish Date: 1 May 2013 (first published 19 July 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 3 January 2014
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: ISIS Publishing
• Imprint: ISIS Large Print Books
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 592
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

Lisa Jewell is an amazing author – I adore her novels and she’s evolved so much since her earlier novels of Ralph’s Party and Thirtysomething, and has become a much better author. I adored Thirtysomething, it’s one of my favourite books, but her newer novels just have an added something, an extra layer of emotion. As soon as I heard about Before I Met You, I couldn’t wait to read it. I adore novels told in dual timelines, and I’m really starting to enjoy novels set in the 20s/30s/40s etc. I love learning about these time periods, and I love how authors bring these decades back to life with so much charm and verve and I was very interested on Jewell’s take on the 20s.

Before I Met You, as I’ve said, is a dual timeline story. There’s Arlette, who moves to London in the 20s from her home in Guernsey, and finds herself caught up in the glitz and glamour of 20s London, the parties, the nightlife, the jazz, the people. Until one day it all falls apart, after she learns a tragic secret, and she flees back to Guernsey, never to return. Decades later, Arlette’s step-grand-daughter Betty is following in her grandmother’s footsteps, not that she knows it yet, having made the exact same journey from Guernsey to London, happy to be standing on her own two feet for the first time in her life. But she has another reason to be in London: she’s there to track down the mysterious Clara Pickle, named in Arlette’s will, and as Betty starts her new life in London, and as she attempts to track down Clara Pickle, she has no idea how her life is going to change.

I really LOVED Before I Met You. It’s such a multi-layered story, with so many threads, and I adored it. I found it to be such an emotional read, one that I both desperately wanted to read and desperately wanted to savour. I loved both tales immensely, I adored learning more about Arlette’s life in the 20s, especially as prior to that we only knew her as Betty knew her, as a frail old lady, and life in the 20s sounded so glamourous, so achingly glamorous. Betty’s story was also amazing, seeing a young girl in the mid-90s trying to make her way in London was great. I enjoyed Betty’s life so, so much. I imagined myself as Betty, hanging out on her fire escape, chatting to the market traders, being friends to the celeb next door! The story alternates chapter by chapter from Betty to Arlette and the lives they lead are fairly similar, though obviously decades apart, and I enjoyed Betty’s search for Clara while running parallel we learned all about it first-hand from Arlette. The search for Clara Pickle was so enjoyable, normally I’m not a massive fan of mysteries in books but this one was so, so good.

Before I Met You was spectacular, the stories were so immensely told that I didn’t want either of them to end, although the ending was very much satisfactory. I was so caught up in Arlette and Betty’s lives, they felt so real to me. This is such a special novel and Jewell is such a special writer, a writer that seems to have grown so, so much with each novel she writes and she’s one of the finest Chick Lit writers around. I’m really, really excited for her new novel The House We Grew Up in which sounds (and looks) absolutely amazing, also. Do read this book, it is an amazing story, with amazing characters that you’ll really adore. It’s an amazing novel, one that I can’t praise highly enough and one I will very much re-read because it was just THAT GOOD. It was so amazing, and I know I’ve started to repeat myself, but it was just that good, and I miss it already.