An enjoyable read that I will go on to recommend. I found the characters interesting and the plot line engaging. Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely loved this book.

From the significance of the charms on the bracelet to the past events that the books returns to during the war it's brilliant.

It's such a harrowing but heart warming story of love, friendship strength and family. Harriet visiting Paris and working where her Grandmother did during the war is such a lovely connection.

I loved following both Claire and her friends, and Harriet and hers. They both have such determination with life and are so alike. Harriet has seen loss too often and I don't think her father knew what to do so didn't do much.

There were occasions in the book that I also linked with Cilkas journey by Heather Morris, as Cilka too was a strong determined person during the war. The Dress makers gift is wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

When Claire found Ernest in La Louvre I could not believe it, but I'm also glad that she found out because she could have carried on not knowing and it would have been even harder to overcome.

I will definitely ready more by this author and recommend this to all I know.

I absolutely adored this book. ... ww2, family secrets, working with the resistance,  I discovered this author last year and she has such a magical way of intertwining historical events or create compelling characters and tales.

Beautifully written captivating novel which effortlessly glides between the past history and modern day. I enjoyed sharing the Harriet's journey as she delves into her family's history, discovering the truth about her grandmother during the Second World War in Paris. The novel touches upon some harrowing but incredibly important events of history, and I highly recommend this book to everyone.

This story is about strong, resilient women, who are generations apart.  
Grandmothers and granddaughters...it tells a story of how one generation of women endured Nazi rule in France.  Claire, Merielle, and Vivi were talented seamstresses who worked for a successful and respectable house of couture.  These young women loved their country and were committed to keeping France strong and doing what they could to resist the Nazis.  

Harriet is a young woman, living in the current century, trying to find her way after her mother’s suicide and her father’s remarriage.   A picture of her grandmother, Claire,  as a young woman, with 2 friends, standing in front of the same couture house where Harriet has just secured a position, becomes an inspiration to find out more about her grandmother’s life and her family history.  
This generated tons of emotions from me.  I loved hearing about Paris during both eras.  The author clearly did her homework regarding research.   The Dressmaker’s Gift gets 4 stars from me. I will definitely read other works by Fiona Valpy.

This was a beautiful story. While there is a saturation of WWII novels out in the word right now this one stands out. This is not a high octane, fast paced drama. It is the unveiling of the journey taken by several women and how their choices shaped their lives and those around them. It is a book about friendship, sacrifice, courage and love. An emotional read that adds another layer of understanding of the endurance of those who lived in France during WWII.

A bit on a slow side, but the plot was good. It covers WWII in Paris. The title well goes with the story here. Don't expect it going fast. IT burns like a candle. Slow. Good reading during evening nights.

Fiona is my new favourite author at the moment her books are warming and heartfelt and this one does not disappoint 

Highly recommend

thanks to netgalley for an advanced reader copy. I enjoyed this flashback story of World War II seamstresses.  I will say I've read several that are very similar to this so it wasn't super unique.

A dual timeline story that actually works! So many before have left me confused and unsatisfied. The chapter headings really helped.

"The Dressmakers Gift" sits nicely in my preferred genre of historical fiction but is also set in current day Paris.....a city I long to return too. The historical side is world war 2, across Paris and into the camps of Nazi Germany.
A story of friendship and the support you can gain from this, to overcome the most terrible of atrocities. As a granddaughter explores how her grandmother survived the worst of the worst and how the pain affected the generations to come.

I was drawn into the story of Harriet, an English girl moving to Paris to undertake a fashion industry internship. She carries with her a photo of three girls her age....one of these her grandmother Claire. Her real life mirrors theirs in the beginning .......except the 3 girls became caught up in the horrors of Hitler's grip in France. They faught as true heroines, but the cost was extremely high.

As I explore my own family tree and uncover the lives of my ancestors, I feel huge empathy with Harriet. Her mother was not around to personally pass on Claires amazing story of love, loyalty and strength. But Harriet discovers a lot about her grandmother and herself, during her year in Paris.

Thanks to Netgalley and Fiona Valpy for the opportunity to be entranced by this book.

A really moving read.I was immediately drawn in to the story.Its an emotional moving story a book that required a box of tissues nearby.Highly recommend.#netgalley#amazonuk

Sometimes a good book is a slow burn and that's how The Dressmaker's Gift is. The story develops slowly, introducing characters, and setting the stage for Nazi occupied France. I enjoyed the grandmothers story and timeline more compelling then the granddaughters. While the book was good, I have read a few non-fiction books that had me on the edge of my seat related to similar topics. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the ARC. It was my pleasure to read and review this book and I do recommend. 
Overall rating is a 3.5 stars (only because a recent non-fiction blew me away on the same subject).

Harriet, traumatised by her mother's untimely death, arrives to work as a PR assistant at a fashion house in Paris. Haunted by the story of her grandmother's mysterious time in the war, she is anxious to find out more about it. The book then flashes back to Harriet's grandmother Claire and her friends who worked as seamstresses. These brave young women secretly worked for the French Resistance...



Fiona Valpy describes France beautifully, and captures the exciting but dangerous time of The Second World War. The characters are all very real, although Harriet doesn't play a big part in the book.  It's a lovely book, although one part is extremely harrowing, and I will read more of Fiona Valpy's books.



I received this free ebook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fascinating tale, with some well created characters who draw you in with their tales. The detail written into the narrative is clever and exciting, the vein of tension that runs throughout makes for gripping reading. 
The clever use to two timelines makes this such a thrilling read, and just as you become invested in one thread, you are pulled to the other, and soon become so entranced in the lives of the other characters, it's a wonderful technique used by the author. 
Vivid descriptions make this such an atmospheric read.

I enjoyed this book, set in Paris, a city that has fond memories for me.

I liked the friendships of all the girls, and the writing brought the little apartment to life for me. 

I love a good dual time line too.

In 2017, Englishwoman Harriet, a recent business graduate, is in Paris. She works as an intern for a fashion PR agency, but she’s also on a quest to uncover her past. Her mother committed suicide, and her father never told her much about her French mother or family. In an old 1941 photograph, Harriet discovers and sees her grandmother, Claire, with two other Frenchwomen. They stood on Rue Cardinale outside the same building where Harriet works and lives in an upstairs apartment. Harriet is flabbergasted when her flatmate, Simone, informs her that her grandmother is also in the same photograph. Simone agrees to tell Harriet all she knows about the three ladies who worked as seamstresses and lived in the same building during the WWII years. Harriet pieces together the three women’s lives: how they’d lived through the Nazi occupation, dealt with attentions from the German officers, worked for the French Resistance, and suffered in concentration camps. Harriet, while enjoying the life of a Parisienne—despite the terror attacks—learns that her family’s history is more disturbing than she’d thought.

Fiona Valpy’s intimate knowledge of France shows in the storyline. It reads as if we are walking alongside the characters in Paris. The novel, through the lives of the individuals, illuminates the hardships the French faced during the Nazi occupation years during WWII. The twin-period narration works well to contrast Paris during and after the war. The inclusion of the terror attacks (although in reality, earlier than 2017) is an exciting addition that’s a reminder of the ever-present horrors of tyranny. The novel includes the concept of “inherited trauma” that Harriet thinks was passed on to her mother from Claire. But it’s heartening, as Valpy notes, that it’s possible to recover from it.

This review first appeared in the HNR Magazine Issue 91 (February 2020)

Ah, this was a lovely read to sort-of-start-my-year-to.

Things you should know about me:

I love Paris. As in, this city might be my favourite of all the cities, more than even New York and I love New York.
I love a book with a wartime setting. I don't know why this is, but it is, I am always strangely drawn to all the wartime historical fiction.

This book, then, well, it kind of could have been written for me, if Fiona Valpy knew me well enough to write a book for me, which she doesn't. What I'm trying to say, in a very long-winded way is that this is a book set in Paris in wartime and I loved it.

Paris in 1940 is under Nazi occupation and 3 young seamstresses are trying to live life as normal - or so they'd have you think. Actually, they all have secrets: Mirielle is fighting the resistance, Claire has a German officer boyfriend, and nobody really knows what's going on with Vivienne.
Then, in the present day, Claire's granddaughter Harriet is in Paris looking for some clues to her past.

It's a good read. I liked it. I read it a couple of days after getting back from Paris, a trip in which we'd made a point of getting off the beaten track a little and going up and down back roads and side streets,which it seems was an excellent plan because it meant that I recognised a lot of the places mentioned in The Dressmaker's Gift. I'm a fan of that. I love recognising places in books, being able to really clearly properly imagine the setting and my - albeit basic - knowledge of Paris (I've only been twice) meant I could -kind of - put myself in Harriet and Mirielle and Claire and Vivienne's shoes and I loved it.

This book is such a good read - 4 strong female protagonists, 3 of them in WWII, love and heartbreak and mystery and betrayal. The last maybe third of the book was hard - two of the girls end up in a Nazi work camp and Valpy pulls no punches - it's graphic and it's hard to read and it hurts, but don't let that pull you off because the rest of this book is not hard to read at all, and it's vivid and descriptive and it's also inspiring, what these 3 girls (and they are girls) manage to achieve against the backdrop of war.  It was interesting too, because a lot of the historical fiction I read falls into similar categories and follows similar patterns, so this, about the Nazi occupation of France was fascinating, the power the Germans had over the French in their own city, the underlying current of fear and oppression that every single person lived under. It's touched on also in Code Name, Verity and I loved it there too, but this takes it a step further and I just found it really interesting to read about. Unimaginable, but interesting nonetheless.

The concept wasn't original - Harriet finds a box of photos and traces them back to Paris where she follows in her Gran's footsteps with the story jumping between then and now and to be honest - as is often the case - I found then massively overshadowed now. I would have loved this book as much without Harriet's part. I might have loved it more and it did seem convenient how she got this job in the same offices as Claire, living in the same apartment as Claire and her friends and living with the granddaughter of one of  Claire's friends. I rolled my eyes and I rolled them hard. I got over it though, once we got into the nitty gritty. Suspend belief. That's what you have to do with this book, suspend belief when it comes to Harriet and just get lost in the story of Mirielle, Claire and Vivienne; they're the ones we're here for anyway.

I will start by saying that I don't think it was the right book for me for so many reasons. Perhaps I should learn from this and swear off any book written by a non-French author set in France with French characters. I get tempted every single time and I get disappointed more often than not. (But I'm not sure I can hold true to this promise.)

The book moves between present-day Paris (2017) where the young British Harriet has found a one-year internship in a fashion PR agency, and the WWII, when three young women, Claire (Harriet's grandmother, but rest assured it's not much of a spoiler), Mireille and Vivienne are fashion seamstresses sharing a flat and working together, who have to choose if they want to stay passive, collaborate with the Nazi invaders or join the Resistance.

Okay, so what didn't work for me [spoilers ahead, stop right here if you want to read this book]:

- the present-day chapters seemed like fillers at best, or/and very cliché and clumsy. the conditions in which Harriet gets this job made me raise highbrows; and Harriet's character lacks consistency and depth
- too many coincidences: the first one comes when Harriet moves into the same Paris building where her grandmother Claire lived, sharing a flat with another granddaughter of the trio... more highbrow raising. It's not the last. I almost got a highbrow cramp from so much raising...
- not enough about sewing and fashion itself.
- inherited trauma. This one is kind of a deal-breaker for me, as this topic is at the heart of the whole story. There's a postface by the author about this theory, that trauma may have ripple effects on later generations. While I can understand some of this theory (but nothing genetic IMHO), I really took offense of the way it's applied to this story, not so much on Harriet's mother (Claire's daughter), but when it comes to Harriet itself.

What I liked:
- The friendship between the three girls
- the unglamorous side of Resistance action
- The reference to Paris' Galliera fashion museum - truly a must-visit if you're interested in fashion

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley, for review consideration.

Ms Valpy has written another amazing book seeped in history and tragedy against the backdrop of France during World War 2. Set in two different timelines, the reader will appreciate the search for identity as Harriet moves to Paris from England, gaining employment within the fashion industry in the actual building where her grandmother lived and worked many years ago. Telling the story from dual POV, Claire, Harriet’s grandmother has her own sense of self to discover as we live the horrors, and moments of love, laughter and friendship during this time. 
Closely linked to Fiona Valpy’s The Beekeeper’s Promise, The Dressmsker’s Gift can be read as a standalone. 
A wonderfully written book, telling a story full of hope.

The Dressmaker’s Gift by Fiona Valpy
Source: Netgalley, Lake Union Publishing, and Audible
Rating: 5/5 stars

It always makes me feel crappy to say I love books about the Nazi regime and World War II, but it is the truth.  I tend to soak up these books and the stories of the people who lived through and triumphed over such misery and depravity.  Fiona Valpy’s The Dressmaker’s Gift is no exception to the rule, and I made through all but the last few chapters in a single sitting.  

I am particularly fond of books that shuffle between the past and the present.  There is always some grand truth, some awful secret that is revealed in these types of books and I am quite a sucker for them.  In this case, young Harriet has come to Paris to begin her life’s work in the fashion industry; upon her arrival, Claire discovers she is working and living in the same location her grandmother once lived and worked in many, many years ago.  Harriet’s grandmother, Claire and her two best friends, Mireille and Vivienne, not only live and worked at the same location, but they also undertook secret and tremendously dangerous missions to aid the French Resistance against the onslaught of Hitler and his Nazis’.  

For Harriet, her time in Paris isn’t just about beginning her own bright career, but also about connecting with her past and understanding the legacy left to her through the women in her family.  As fate would have it, Harriet’s roommate is the granddaughter of one of Claire’s greatest friends and she (Mireille) is willing to help Harriet piece together the puzzle of the past and Harriet’s own family history.  For Harriet, the adventure has only just begun and what she discovers is a harrowing tale of three women – unsung heroes – who sacrificed everything for the greater good. 

From start to finish, I found the chapters related to Claire, her friends, and the war the most interesting.  Each of the three women, Claire, Mireille, and Vivienne were all such bright and wonderful characters, each with their own unique voice and story to tell.  There is a great deal of backstory in this book related to these women and how they each came to be Resistance fighters.  The backstory really brings the women’s lives and sacrifices into focus and helps both the reader and Harriet to understand how each woman came to be who she was.  With each chapter related to the three women and their Resistance efforts, the drama increases and the tension mounts.  Every page is a study in tension and when the dam finally breaks, you are swept up in the devastation and depravity as much as the three friends certainly were.  From the streets of Paris to the concentration camps, three lives unfold to reveal what true passion, compassion, daring, and caring can do when the will and heart are strong.  

As Harriet learns more about her grandmother and her friends, the sacrifices they made and the risks they took, Harriet must come to terms with some of her own truths.  For much of her life, Harriet has blamed her inability to truly connect with others on the loss of her mother at an early age and the rather standoffish nature of her father and his new family.  In the face of her grandmother’s story, Harriet resolves to stop blaming others, to deal with her own issues, and live a life worthy of Claire, Mireille, and Vivienne.

The Bottom Line:  As a means of full disclosure, I listened to the Audible version of this book rather than read a physical copy.  I believe I may have had a far better experience with this book on audio than I would have simply reading it myself.  With two narrators – one for Claire and one for Harriet – I was able to more fully connect with the women and their stories.  What’s more, Claire’s narrator in particular is so very skilled at conveying emotion through tone.  I was able to feel the tension, the sadness, the fear through the narrator and it greatly enriched the experience for me.  I found the transitions from one narrator to the next to be flawless and easy to follow which means the transitions from past to present were also flawless.  I preferred the chapters related to the past the most and found the detail and historical accuracy to be spot on.  Again, it always makes me feel awful to say I loved a book such as this, but I did!  The story of these women is told with compassion, empathy, and a very real sense admiration.  Though Claire, Mireille, and Vivienne are fictional characters, the most certainly represent real women who sacrificed everything to help bring evil to an end.