A Good Housekeeping Good Books Spring 2025 pick

'Vividly conjures the excitement of Paris' RUTH HOGAN, bestselling author of THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS
'Beguiling' The Times

Can she escape the darkness of her past in the City of Light?
It's 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie's real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father and his frustrated wife is suffocating.

She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to uncover the mystery of her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong.

When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it's both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected...

'Original, page turning, wonderful. I loved it.' KATIE FFORDE
'A delightful, funny, poignant story suffused with the atmosphere of Paris on the cusp of the Sixties' RACHEL HORE

READERS HAVE FALLEN FOR BONJOUR, SOPHIE
'I read it one sitting' *****
'Wonderfully evocative' *****
'Elizabeth Buchan has excelled herself' *****
'Loved every moment' *****
'Delightful and compelling ... will also make you laugh' *****

Elizabeth Buchan is on brilliant form ... This is a coming-of-age story steeped in wisdom with an incredible sense of time and place, whether the setting is a beautiful but stifling English village or the dizzying streets of Paris. Bonjour, Sophie deserves as much love as its beguiling heroine * The Times *
This beautifully written book stole my heart. A heart-warming, poignant, sometimes humorous, and always captivating novel. Post-war Paris is made real and vivid. Nothing I've previously read set there and at that time comes close. -- Dinah Jefferies, No. 1 bestselling author of THE TEA PLANTER'S WIFE
A glorious read! So evocative. Conjures the excitement of Paris so vividly that the reader cannot fail to be swept along on the journey. A magical coming-of-age story. I loved it! -- Ruth Hogan, bestselling author of THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS
Elizabeth Buchan's books are always original, beautifully written and page turning. Bonjour, Sophie is just as wonderful, unlike anything I've read before. I loved it. -- Katie Fforde
You'll adore meeting Sophie in this delightful, funny, poignant story that's suffused with the atmosphere of Paris on the cusp of the Sixties -- Rachel Hore
A rich and enthralling read ... I felt as though I was being swept away by the power of a modern Thomas Hardy .... This is a coming-of-age story set in magical locations with a heroine you can't resist falling in love with. A novel that will appeal to all ages, and a sure hit. -- Carol Drinkwater, bestselling author of THE OLIVE FARM
One of my favourite authors and someone I go to for that alchemy of story and fabulous writing. A wonderful book - warm, compassionate and nuanced. I loved it. -- Emma Curtis
A coming-of-age novel and so much more. Buchan weaves her narrative into a mystery that must be solved as much for the reader as for Sophie, whose story recalled, for me, the young heroines of Elizabeth Jane Howard, modern women cramped by convention, yet spirited and courageous. A wonderful, engrossing, tear-jerking and joyful read. -- Elizabeth Fremantle
A poignant, charming and cheering story of a girl's growth into womanhood in 1960s Paris -- Amanda Craig
Memorable and emotionally charged ... an immersive, sensory, page-turning experience. Elizabeth Buchan is skilled at exploring moral complexities big and small, from thwarted love affairs in the Sussex countryside, to dysfunctional families, to life in Paris under Nazi occupation. She takes us through the back alleys of History, among stories that are not widely known, and brings those settings vividly to life -- Jane Thynne
A beautiful and poignant coming of age story that whisks you away on a magical journey to Paris -- Becky Hunter
Bonjour, Sophie casts a beam of light into the darkness of post-war Britain; a cry for freedom of a whole generation of women. An incredibly emotional and evocative read -- Ellen Alpsten, author of Tsarina
Tender, beautifully observed, gorgeous -- Marika Cobbold
A profoundly kind book, with a deep understanding of what it is to be human ... charms and delights with its life-affirming generosity of spirit. It will also make you laugh. * Time & Leisure *

Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton and Two Women in Rome. Buchan's short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She is a judge for the Women's Prize for non fiction 2024, and was also on the judging panels for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival.


elizabethbuchan.com