The Girl in the Painting

I hadn’t heard of Jojo Moyes before reading The Last Letter From Your Lover back in April, but she is fast approaching a must-read author for me. Part One of The Girl You Left Behind begins in Occupied France in late 1916; Sophie Lefevre is doing her best to keep her family safe from the German soldiers who traipse through her hotel bar when a new Kommandant begins to take an interest in her and a portrait her husband painted of her before the war. A series of unfortunate events leads to Sophie’s removal from her French town and she is never seen again.
Like Lover, Moyes ends Part One on a cliffhanger and jumps a couple decades into the future (in this case, London 2006) where the past and present begin to intertwined. Liv Halston lost her husband four years ago and is still a mess, she stumbles into a bar on the anniversary of her husband’s death and meets a man named Paul. Unfortunately, his job is to recover works of art that were stolen during war time and return them to their rightful owner; unbeknownst to Paul and Liv, the painting Liv received from her deceased husband on their honeymoon is his current case. The trial takes up most of Part Two and near the end pieces of the past begin to come to light creating a well rounded narrative of a century old painting.
I think I liked The Girl You Left Behind more than The Last Letter from your Lover because there was a bit less adultery and the present day story was equally as captivating as the past. I will say I began to piece together the gaps before Moyes revealed all the pieces but it was still a good ending that did all the characters justice.