Kate is a psychologist on leave to handle family matters in France. Her grandfather's estate is crumbling toward the sea and in great need of repair or sale. While trying to sort through her family's situation and her own troubled relationship with her daughter, Kate develops a relationship with a traumatized war veteran, to whom she begins to open up about her own past.

I tried to get into this novel several times but I couldn't get past the halfway point. Apart from the slow storyline, I was turned off by a separate narrative told from the perspectives of wild animals around the estate. While the writing was rich, it was too slow-moving to fully engage me. ( )

Kate visits the south of France in order to make her grandfather sell his home, a home where she used to spend her summers as a child. Predictable things ensure. Interspersed with French words and phrases such as “le cash”, meaning “the cash” for us mere English speakers, this book is not only predictable but pretentious as well. Neighbors, relatives and acquaintances of Kate who are meant to be eccentric are merely undeveloped. Tense exchanges take place that the reader couldn’t possibly care less about because of the lack of character development.

Not worth the time it took the read, but not so poorly written that I quit, hence the 2 star rating. ( )

I just love a transformational story where a severely broken character discovers who they are, where they went wrong and how to live a better more constructive life. For this, Whispering in French never disappointed. There were several fairly well developed broken characters - each broken in their own way brought to Pays Basque of southern France. The 300 year old crumbling manor is representational of these crumbling folk, their crumbling relationships and the need to rebuild them.

The writing is richly descriptive, even painterly. It describes a warm southern European locale, exquisite to view and very much at the mercy of Mother Nature. In a desire to be surrounded by such beauty, many had risked their lives and/or prosperity by being precariously perched on the edge of the sea, high on a bluff. When all comes tumbling down, you may either pick yourself up and rebuild your life or crumble with the walls into oblivion.

There's a quirky and rather charming sub-story within the book which mirrors the human relationships within the main story, about which I will say no more lest I spoil it for other readers.

Always remember, ....

"If you want to travel fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, travel together."

I am grateful to author Sophia Nash, Harper Collins Publishers and LibraryThing Early Reviewers for having provided a free uncorrected proof of this book. Their generosity, however, has not influenced this review - the words of which are mine alone. ( )

Whispering in French by Sophia Nash is the story of Kate Hamilton who travels to France to navigate the now in disrepair family home that belonged to her grandfather. Often, there is a juxtaposition in stories of how a main characters vocation is their weakest link. In this case, Kate is a psychotherapist whose life is a mess (physician heal thyself). Sometimes this can lead to an interesting storyline with transformation for a character. It didn’t work for me here. There are also some odd inclusions of conversations with animals I found unnecessary. I really wanted a lot more out of this book.
Thank you to LibraryThing and William Morrow for the advanced reader copy and the opportunity to review Whispering in French. ( )

Kate is an interesting main character – even though she is a psychologist trying to help her patients with life problems, her personal life is a mess and she doesn’t see much hope for her future. She is divorced, estranged from her teenage daughter, has a mom she doesn’t get along with and is on her way to France to encourage her grandfather to sell his huge crumbling family villa. He is in poor health and deeply in debt and she thinks that the only way to help him is to sell the home that has been in their family for centuries. As soon as she fixes everything in France, she can go back to America. Life has a way of changing even the best of plans and the small-town village people and her memories of the wonderful summers that she spent at the villa make her re-think her plans. Will she be able to forgive herself and learn to live life to the fullest in France or will her self-doubts make her return to her unhappy life in America? Take a trip to rural France in this novel and find out how Kate decides to live the rest of her life. ( )