All the Diamonds in Paris (Kristin Harmel)

The publisher’s summary
Paris, 1942: In the midst of the Nazi Occupation, Annabel Marceau begins stealing from Germans and funnelling money to the French Resistance. But when she takes a pair of valuable bracelets from a high-ranking Nazi officer, she finds herself – and her two young daughters – in the line of fire, with devastating consequences.
Boston, 2018: Colette Marceau, now in her eighties, has spent a lifetime determined to find out what happened to her mother and sister that fateful night. When one of the missing bracelets surfaces at the Boston Diamond Museum, can she finally find the answers – and justice – she has been looking for?

My reading impressions

I have read about Kristin Harmel novels, but it was the first one I read.

Kristin Harmel is very interested in the WWII period and she has clearly researched a lot about it. This gives this story a very vivid backdrop, with the early years of Colette Marceau’s life in Paris. Colette is 14 during the war and she is therefore old enough to understand what happens when friends of her family are taken away, and when her own family falls apart. The evocative writing brings us into the WWII Paris, the events of the Vel d’Hiv, the ambivalent attitudes of some officials, but also the powerful network of resistance. And Colette becomes a part of that network by stealing jewels, like her mother and generations before, to make the world a better place.

The novel goes back and forth between those years and 2018, and how Colette’s life has developed. She has continued to steal all her life, always with the same goal, and with success. But this bracelet turning up in a museum brings Colette back to those war years and helps her to find the answers she was looking for all her life.

I liked the theme of being an agent of change throughout the book, over generations and generations (although the idea that Colette is a descendant of Robin Hood was distracting from the story). The idea of doing something wrong, even illegal, to correct wrongs that had been done in the past is food for thought. And I found the relationships between the characters very strong, reminding us that beyond our blood family, there are sometimes bonds that create another family around us, bringing many good things to our lives.

I enjoyed reading this novel and discovering Kristin Harmel. The author’s note is a great read as well and I feel a lot of admiration and respect for her realising how she managed to write this book when cancer was dominating her life. Impressive.

Thank you to NetGalley and Headline for giving me the opportunity to review this book. All opinions are my own.

#AlltheDiamondsinParis #Netgalley

You can find out more about Kristin Harmel on her website or on Friends and Fiction (where Kristin Harmel spoke about this novel in a recent podcast). This novel is published in the US under the title The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau.