I Looked For the One My Heart Loves by Dominique Marny

Published By: Publishers Square , 12 August, 2014

a publishing partner of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc 

Twitter: (@OpenRoadMedia)| Facebook

Originally Published as:

J’ai cherché celui que mon coeur aime  (I Sought Him Whom my Soul Loves)

{ IF I may add a small note on the titles: the original title in direct English translation suits this novel! }

(by Presses de la Cite), 2011

Available Formats:  Paperback, Ebook

Translated by:  Jean Charbonneau

Author Connections: Site | Facebook

Converse on Twitter: #ILookedForTheOneMyHeartLoves & #FranceBT

Acquired Book By: I was selected to be a tour stop on the “I Looked for the One My Heart Loves” virtual book tour through France Book Tours. I received a complimentary ARC copy of the book direct from the publisher Open Road Media, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

I Looked For the One My Heart Loves
by (Translator) Jean Charbonneau, Dominique Marny
Source: Publisher via France Book Tours

Anne and Alexis are separated by war as children and reunited later by destiny. A powerful and dramatic love story that spans decades in spite of its seeming impossibility.

Anne, 9, and Alexis, 11, grow up together in the Montmartre area of Paris. While she has a major crush on him, he merely sees her as his friend’s little sister. After WWII begins, the two are separated as their families flee Paris to avoid the German occupation. When they say goodbye, Alexis promises to always protect Anne.

Anne holds on to this promise for years as she constantly thinks of Alexis, wondering where he may be. Anne grows up, finds works in an art gallery, and marries a kind, devoted man with whom she has two children. But her heart still belongs to Alexis and she never stops looking for him. Their paths cross fatefully one day in Brussels many years after they were separated.

Alexis, living in Canada and soon to be moving to San Francisco, has a family of his own; a wife in constant depression and a son. Despite their responsibilities to family and the geographical distance that keeps them apart, Anne and Alexis find a way to love one another, secretly yet passionately.

But after all this time, will they ever manage to be truly together, completely?

Places to find the book:

Published by Open Road Integrated Media Inc, Publishers Square

on 12th August, 2014

Pages: 384

Author Biography:  

Dominique Marny was raised in a family that loves art, literature, adventure and travels. In addition to being a novelist, she is a playwright, screenwriter, and writes for various magazines.

A shortened & condensed reading of a World War:

One of the gifts Marny gives her readers is a shortened and condensed reading of a World War, by attaching a full historical enriched scope of the French side of World War II. Knitted into the arc of the chapter which begins in 1939 is an intact re-creation of all the pertinent moments which had the most impact on French families and citizens. She approached this section of her novel with an intensity yet intermixed a warmth of hope and love of family, as she focuses on Anne as a central figure to highlight the discrepancies as you would observe them. By focusing on Anne during this time, we see the war through the eyes of an innocent child whose wishful thinking and dreams are nearly curtailed by the haunting realities of what war can bring into your world view.

Marny does a considerable job at bringing us right into the heat of the bombings flying over Paris to the lesser known anguished moments of separation from school friends and the family members who live too far away to commute to see when living under German occupation. I appreciated seeing everything Anne saw and breathing in a side of the war I had not yet felt touched in other stories.

My Review of I Looked for the One My Heart Loves:

As the story opens centered on a family living in France on the fringes of World War II developing into their lives, we peer into the young life of Anne, of whom we greeted at a cemetery decades later before warming into her years of childhood. The transitional shift left me curious to know not only of whom the grave marker belonged too, but who the curious stranger was in front of her visiting the same grave! As a young child, Anne felt the full measure of anguished sorrow for how a new Great War would impact her life and the ones she cared about the most. She was at the impressionable age where knowing about what feared adults was enough to fear a child. Her brother Bernard was like a typical brother, bent on teasing his sister and tormenting her with either embarrassment in front of their peers or telling her things she would rather not know at all. The two were caught up in the tides of a changing world – where freedom and the sanctity of family would be tested.

The mass exodus out of Paris into safer areas of France is depicted with equal measures of heightened alarm for safety and the arduous tension in walking or biking hours at at time reach a destination. Although I had known Paris and London were left behind for only those who could brave the war which arrived on their doorsteps, I had not yet read of what Parisians had gone through during the developing days leading into World War II. I have oft read war dramas from the perspective of the British during this war, and therefore, am a bit remiss on knowing more about the French. When I read Letters from Skye, I learnt a great deal about the front lines and the intensity of staying hopeful amidst uncertainty.  Marny and Brockmole have a way of placing us into the heart of the French people and the plight of France during the war itself in such a way as to feel as though we lived the hours ourselves.

The entire first section of this novel is a beautiful eclipse of how war affects a young girl and how her life is different by living through war as it altered her neighbourhood and disrupted the lives of everyone she knew. She held a candle lit for the young boy she held an infatuation of concern for during the bombings of Paris; never knowing where his family had fled a few years before when Paris was starting to feel the blitz of the bombers. The bond she felt for Alexis and the growing love she knew was in her heart for him is what helped her endure. She cast her thoughts on his own well-being and although they lived apart during the war, her spirit was tied to his.

After the war, Anne started to fuse her passion for art into a passionate career, all the while curious about where Alexis had gone inside his own life’s adventure. She was not one who strove to entertain the idea of marriage, but rather was found in the throes of loving a man who genuinely loved her in return. Her life took on a rhythm part of her choosing and part of choosing to live a life that might become expected of her to curate. Because she elected to make choices in her life based on where society and convention were guiding her to tread, she ended up closing the door on her own heart’s desire. Anne’s life because a swirling sea of art acquisitions and galley showings featuring artists both renowned and starting out to gain an audience. As the years started to encompass her hours, even motherhood did not tether her heart to happiness.

It was always a nudge inside her mind that she had missed something, or rather that she had missed the opportunity to be with someone she always felt was more her equal and her other half. Alexis was only a boy when they departed from each others’ lives, yet the candle that once flickered for him turnt into a fiery flame renewed through happenstance which led them into that daring twist of fate where deciding which path you take in life can either be your downfall or your unexpected blessing.

I was a bit betwixt myself as I read this novel if I agreed with her choice to follow after Alexis; and I credit this vacillation to a previous novel I read in August Lemongrass Hope, of whose thematic of choice parallels I Looked for the One My Heart Loves. In many ways, what left me feeling a bit aghast is that the lead character in Lemongrass Hope found beauty and joy inside being a mother – to consider leaving her children even if she had chosen to live a different life than she dreamt for herself was a cross she was not willing to bear, yet the path she chose to live was one that surprised me in the end. Anne on the other hand is career-driven and is not willed to her children as Kate was to hers and this in of itself shows the differences within motherhood and the connection a mother shares with her children. However, for me personally, I felt Anne came off more self-centered and selfish than Kate, as Kate was caught between fate and true love. Anne never had the luxury of experiencing what Kate had with Ian, and therefore, in this instance I sided with Francois over Anne. On a lot of levels, Francois and Anne were identical to each other: each were dedicated to their professions to where they approached marriage and children second to their career.

Lemongrass Hope matches this novel for exploring the fragility of the human heart and the yearnings of a powerful mind bent on pursuing its own convicting motivation. For me, although I enjoyed reading this novel, I found myself a bit wanton of wanting to dig back into Lemongrass Hope. In a lot of ways I felt Impellizzeri had won me over for how she handled the truism of a conflicted heart and soul. Whereas Marny gave me a breath of insight into the French who survived the war and the carefree approach to living I always felt the French embraced as a celebration for life itself.

On writing a unique Romance set against time, memory, and war:

I appreciated the honesty and raw emotions that Marny stitched into her novel, as she has written a very unique Romance set against time, memory, and war. The initial reactions I felt to the story of Anne and Alexis were two people caught up in each others’ lives who drifted apart out from war. Yet, when I soaked into the story, I started to see the complexity of understanding who we choose to love and who we might have let go from our life without realising they were the ones our heart had chosen to love before our mind even realised the connection. Both of Marny’s characters made choices to marry against their own will in some ways, because neither was quite ready for what marriage would bring into their life.

The honesty within their thoughts and the actions they took after their reconnection warmed me to their story, because life as in fiction, choices can determine the fate of where we end up in our lives. And, not everything is straight-up right nor wrong, there are in-between places as well. The one I felt a bit sorry for in the story were Anne’s husband Francois, who truly loved Anne in a way she could not quite reciprocate. This is not merely a Romance novel but a literary novel centered on human emotions and the conflictions of understanding the line between desire and adultery.

Meet Dominique Marny via OpenRoadMedia

Inspired to Share:

I always appreciate seeing a video about an author I am about to read, and in this one I appreciated getting to know someone who speaks a different language than I do, because through the sub-titles and the way in which Ms. Marny describes the story she’s written, I felt connected in a way that would lend a curiosity to read her novel. I hope you appreciate seeing her inside this short introduction as much as I had originally.

Virtual Road Map for 

“I Looked for the One My Heart Loves” Blog Tour:

Be sure to scope out upcoming tours I will be hosting with:

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.

The ‘live reading’ tweets I shared as I read & reviewed “I Looked for the One My Heart Loves”:

{ favourite & Re-tweet if inspired to share }

#amreading & #amblogging my thoughts & observations for a #histfic #WWII #newbook I Looked for the One My Heart Loves; translated #French

— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) September 5, 2014

Not since I read #LettersFromSkye have I felt as connected to #France during #WWII in a drama of #histfic as I do whilst #amreading D.Marny!
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) September 5, 2014

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• Go Indie