Book Review: Little Provence Book Shop, by Gillian Harvey

Published by Boldwood Books Ltd. (London) in 2024, Little Provence Book Shop by Gillian Harvey is a novel that pulls the reader into the sphere or rather, in this case, the bookstore. The two main characters are Adeline, a single mother who needed to “escape to France” with her daughter Lilli, and Monique, the shop owner. A mix of escapism, romance, personal reflection, and a mystery set in rural Provence. What more could you want in a novel? Our book review follows below.

About the Author

Gillian Harvey is a British freelance journalist and bestselling author of a number of books set in France, including Midnight in Paris (2025), A Year at the French Farmhouse (2022), and The Village Café in the Loire (2025). She lives in Norfolk, England, with her husband and five children. On her Facebook Page, she describes herself as an author of “emotional, uplifting and often humorous contemporary fiction.”

Book Review

A single mother, Adeline, with her five-year-old daughter, Lilli, leaves London, where her boyfriend Colin has balked at the responsibility of being a father, and seeks a safe haven in the small Provencal village of St. Vianne, where she has found a job as a librarian in a small bookshop. The bookshop’s owner is a mysterious woman named Monique, who left Paris years earlier to settle in a place where she could make a difference in people’s lives. Monique has a unique talent of intuitively understanding people, their problems and their fears, and finding the books that will heal them or even change their lives.

Adeline is gradually affected and changes throughout the book, becoming more self-confident and more rooted in the small Provencal community that accepts her non-judgmentally. She learns from Monique to assert herself in different ways, such as in her clothing choices. Whilst Monique wears bright colours, silk scarves, jewels and make-up, Adeline had, over the years, “adopted a style that was unconfrontational, dull. Jeans, T-shirts, and the occasional summer dress in a non-descript fabric. Modest. Boring. She saw how Monique’s clothes, worn with confidence, added to her boss’s vibrancy…” (p. 57), and eventually acquires a new wardrobe more suited to her new environment.

The Adeline who blooms in the warmth of Provence, both of its people and of its climate, attracts the young men in the area, including the son of the baker, and Monique’s nephew, who is a professor in Avignon. Although she appreciates their attention, she is not ready to start a new relationship but remains on friendly terms with both, enjoying their company and yet remaining somewhat aloof. But as these Provencal men love children, they develop close paternal or avuncular bonds with Lilli, Adeline’s daughter, who has no father figure in her life, and they become attached to her. She also makes friends with the inhabitants of St. Viane, who all become very fond of her, and attends school in the village, which she loves.

But at the heart of the book is a mystery, well, actually two mysteries: who really is Adeline? And who is Monique? It turns out that both women have very complicated backgrounds that have shaped their lives up to the moment they meet and start working together in the little bookshop. In the first half of the book, we see a new Adeline growing and becoming more like Monique. Whilst in the second half of the book it is their personal stories that unfold, family stories of loss and abandonment, of search for parents who were not there when they were growing up, as well as their ongoing exploration of their own identities as single mothers, daughters, business women, of their roots both in France and England, and their responsibilities for the people they care about, in order not to repeat the mistakes of their forebears.

As this is a novel with twists and surprises at every turn, I would not do it justice to reveal how the story eventually unfolds or how the puzzle is resolved in the last quarter of the book. In Monique’s words: “Stories do not fit neatly into a spreadsheet. They fill the space they need, in our hearts, our heads, our imaginations.” (p. 19) This is such a story.

Buy Your Copy of “Little Provence Book Shop”

More Books On Provence to Read

Full-Day Wine Adventure from Marseille: Exploring the Côtes de Provence Appellation

Join us for a captivating day tour as we explore the Côtes de Provence wine appellation! Your adventure begins by unveiling the beauty of Montagne Sainte Victoire, an iconic symbol of the area.

Book this Experience

Mary Jane Deeb

Mary Jane is multilingual and decidedly multicultural. Born in Alexandria, Egypt to Slovenian-Levantine parents, Mary Jane grew up speaking French at home. Her studies and travels took her from an Irish school run by nuns to Washington, D.C., where she has lived since 1983 with her family.

This mother and now a grandmother is one accomplished lady with a doctorate in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University. She is currently the Chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress.

Her career has included positions as the Editor of The Middle East Journal, Director of the Omani Program at The American University in Washington D.C. and Director of the Algeria Working Group at The Corporate Council on Africa.

Mary Jane taught at both Georgetown University and The George Washington University. She worked tirelessly for the United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), America-Mideast and Educational and Training Services, Inc. (AMIDEAST), and the US Agency for International Development in Lebanon during the civil war.

In her spare time, Mary Jane has published four mysteries: Cocktails and Murder on the Potomac which is set in Washington DC, and three others that are set in Grasse, Cannes and Nice: Murder on the Riviera, A Christmas Mystery in Provence and Death of a Harlequin. You can find Mary Jane's books here.

The beauty of Provence continues to inspire Mary Jane’s writing.