My review is written with thanks to Pigeonhole for the opportunity to read and review The Museum Of Broken Promises. 

Blurb:

Paris, today. The Museum of Broken Promises is a place of wonder and sadness, hope and loss. Every object in the museum has been donated – a cake tin, a wedding veil, a baby’s shoe. And each represent a moment of grief or terrible betrayal. The museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest. Laure, the owner and curator, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display.

Prague, 1985. Recovering from the sudden death of her father, Laure flees to Prague. But life behind the Iron Curtain is a complex thing: drab and grey yet charged with danger. Laure cannot begin to comprehend the dark, political currents that run beneath the surface of this communist city. Until, that is, she meets a young dissident musician. Her love for him will have terrible and unforeseen consequences.

It is only years later, having created the museum, that Laure can finally face up to her past and celebrate the passionate love which has directed her life.

Review:

When I first signed up to read The Museum Of Broken Promises I wasn’t sure if it would be my kind of thing, but I thought I would give it a try. It’s certainly very different to anything I would normally read, but I’m incredibly glad that I did. Elizabeth Buchan is a wonderful wordsmith, and she is brilliant at bringing her characters’ emotions to life so that the reader can feel them too. I was completely drawn into Laure’s story and I longed for a happy ending for her.

The sections of The Museum Of Broken Promises set in Prague explores the communist rule in 1986. I know very little about this period and its political regime so I was pleased to learn more about what took place and how it affected the people who lived there. Buchan has researched this in great detail and I could really feel the tension that existed between the political groups. There are some scenes that are difficult to read but I appreciated the way these were handled sensitively.

The Museum Of Broken Promises is available from Amazon.