I am very excited to be today’s stop on the #LittleThings blog tour. ‘How To Find Love in the Little Things’ by Virginie Grimaldi, is being published in paperback tomorrow. Big thank you to Anne Cater from #RandomThingsTours for the blog tour invite, and thank you to Headline for the ARC. Here is my review:
‘Welcome to Ocean View. You don’t know it yet, but you’ll be happy here…’
Julia’s not running away. Not exactly. She just needs a break from Paris and Marc and all the sad stuff that’s been going on lately. A little time to pull herself together.
The job offer felt like a lifeline. But now she’s back in Biarritz, suitcase in hand, she hasn’t the faintest idea what she was thinking.
What Julia doesn’t yet know is there’s more to the odds and ends of Ocean View than meet the eye. Behind the double doors lie broken hearts, lifelong secrets, a touch of romance and an unwavering passion for life. And sometimes it’s the most unlikely of places and people who help you find your way.
What does TWG think?
Oh! What a lovely little book this is! I had high for ‘How to Find Love in the Little Things’ as I fell in love with the cover straight away, and I had everything crossed that the inside of the book was going to be as captivating as the outside. I was right!
Julia has hit a point in her life where she either fights for something that’s not right, or she takes flight and starts afresh somewhere else in hope that she can find her true happiness again. I know, it does sound very easy, doesn’t it! With several months of heartbreak under her belt alongside a psychology degree, Julia thinks that she should be able to cope because her education says so, and because other people around her who are dealing with the same grief, are moseying on with their lives as though nothing compared. Like I say, Julia ‘THINKS’ that. Of course we all know that what we think isn’t always what’s actually happening. People deal with grief in completely different ways, and the only think that Julia should be telling herself instead of ‘deal with it’, is that ‘everyone is different’. Surely as a psychologist she must tell her clients that on a regular basis? Do as I say, not as I do, has never been more apt.
Ocean View – what a lovely name for a residential home! Even before the author allowed her readers to meet the residents of Ocean View, I couldn’t help but giggle as I hoped there would be a character just like my great-grandmother. You know, the sort of older lady who couldn’t give a flying youknowwhat, would do everything she wasn’t supposed to do, and would cause so much mischief it became what they were known for. THAT was my great-grandmother. A force to be reckoned with if you will. Whilst I’m not going to confirm or deny whether there was a character like my great-grandmother, Waddy, I couldn’t help but feel closer to her in the company of all of the residents at Ocean View.
Every single resident has their own story to tell, some with more devastation than others, yet each one relighting the fire in Julia’s belly with their outlook on life itself. I won’t lie, their stories certainly made me sit up and take notice. We all have a habit of worrying about things. We all have a habit of looking at a picture piece by piece, without taking a moment to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Is that bad? No, it’s not – we are all different. But, after listening to Louise, Miss Granny 2004, and even Clara, a little piece of me was able to find love in the little things. Some people may go and by a 50″ TV and be over the moon, despite shelling out several hundred pounds for the honour. Whereas someone else may receive a letter in the post from a friend, telling them that they were thinking of them. Two different outlooks of happiness, yet both are at different ends of the scale. It really is the little things in life that people remember the most. The memories. The smells. The smiles. The laughter. How many of us can honestly say that, when we think about our pasts, we think about all of the material gifts we received?
Virginie Grimaldi made me giggle with her wonderful character creations, but most importantly, this author made me feel humbled. She made me feel as though I was rich as the way in which she told her story, the author took things back to basics, making her readers feel with their hearts instead of their heads.
I really enjoyed ‘How to Find Love in the Little Things’, and I really do feel that a lot of people will be able to benefit from the heart-warming message that Virginie Grimaldi conveys throughout her book. If you’re ever in need of a hug, a confidence boost, or a kick up the tooshmanoosh – ‘How to Find Love in the Little Things’ will certainly point you in the right direction for all of that…and more.
An insightful, heart-warming, and poignant novel – everyone needs a little bit of Ocean View in their lives.
About the author.
Virginie Grimaldi grew up in Bordeaux and has wanted to be a writer
for as long as she can remember. She wrote her first novel aged eight in a green notebook with
multiplication tables in the back. It was about love and the sea and featured a thirty-page-long
sunset . . .
How to Find Love in the Little Things was first published in France in May 2016 and became an
instant bestseller, translated into multiple languages.
You can follow Virginie on Twitter: @GinieGrimaldi
The Writing Garnet 
Thanks for the Blog Tour support Kaisha x
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