How well you enjoy a book is highly dependent on what your state of mind is when you pick it up. When you pick up a book at the right time, it speaks to your heart. Thus, what might have ended up as an average read at any other time ends up connecting with your emotions deeply. Luckily for me (and for the author), I picked up this book at the right time.

Joseph, a retired cardiologist, has recently lost his wife of many years to dementia. As she was just in her late fifties, he isn’t mentally prepared for her death and finds himself struggling to go on living without her. Imagine his surprise when he finds that his wife Lou’s final wish is that he spend the next two months reuniting his discordant family members and making sure that they are truly happy. Their family includes their son Cyrian, his wife Albane and daughter Charlotte, extending to his ex-girlfriend Maëlle and daughter Apple, and their daughter Sarah, who is determined not to engage in long-term relationships because of her disability. Ensuring happiness for this motley group isn’t easy and Joseph, who hasn’t been a hands-on father any time before, finds that his assumptions about his family’s emotional status quo are quite wrong.

The storyline is very straightforward, and to a great extent, predictable. Each of the characters mentioned above has their share of struggles and are portrayed in a very human way rather than black or white. I love writers that do this. Reading too many goody-goody characters can be harmful for your health. :P I especially loved the way the granddaughters were portrayed with sass and gumption rather than plain old sugar and spice.

What turns this book from a typical general fiction novel to an intriguing one is its writing style. Every single main character in this novel (YES, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!) finds a voice in the story. So the plot comes to you from the perspectives of the parents Joseph and Lou (the latter speaking from the place beyond death), the children Cyrian and Sarah, their past and present love interests (Danny, Maëlle, Albane, Patrice, and Federico), the grandchildren Apple and Charlotte, AND three additional minor characters. That’s fourteen character voices in a single book! Yet, the book doesn't get overwhelming but helps you connect better to the individual behind the voice. To take it a notch higher, most of the main character perspectives are written in first person and addressed to second person Lou. This makes their stories feel even more intimate as they talk from their hearts to the one who is no more. The rest of the povs are written in third person, and you can sense the feeling of this narrator being an outsider because he/she isn’t speaking to Lou directly. The distinction is really well demarcated.

One very special character in the book who doesn’t get an independent narrative is Groix Island, the place where the entire story is set. What a perfect setting it is for this story! You will find yourself longing to be at the island, amid the gulls, watching the cold waves thrashing on the rocky shores. At least half of the magic of the story is because of the locale. The internal conflicts of the characters are perfectly complemented by the stoic atmosphere of the island, its reliable presence an anchor to the emotionally adrift people in the story. The book highlights, time and again, the need to look deeper in people's hearts rather than judge them by face value and surface actions. Every single character in the book has hidden secrets, some of which don’t get revealed to the rest even after the story is over.

The book isn’t perfect. I have a strong feeling that there is something major lost in translation here. The original French version, “Entre ciel et Lou” (Between the sky and Lou), has a solid GR rating with mostly 4 or 5 stars. The English version’s rating is vehemently clustered around the 4 star mark. While I didn’t find any flaw with the language used per se, I couldn’t help finding the passion behind the words missing in many cases. The biggest clue to this lacuna lies in the title. “A Bucket List to Die For” is a complete misnomer as the story has nothing to do with a bucket list. The title and the cover make the book appear like a chick-lit novel, which it isn’t, though it does have its share of humour and light moments. The book is a strongly emotional drama and those who pick it up in the hope of light relief will be disappointed.

Another problem could be the pace of the story. It is really very slow and takes a long time to unfold. For me, it clicked because I’m in a state of mind where I can’t concentrate on any page for more than a few minutes. If you are looking for a quick story, this book might not work for you.

However, as I said, the timing was perfect for me as the book suited my current mood. In a way, it was cathartic for me to read this. It’s a book that deals with grief, loneliness, friendship, health issues, family relationships (spousal, parental and sibling), love, death, trust, heartbreaks… It offers an emotional release for every mood without inundating your senses. So I’m quite happy with this read. It offered me just what I needed—a light, emotional read--without overwhelming me. I would rate it a 4.25.

Thank you, NetGalley and Hodder Paperbacks, for the Advanced Review Copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn't sure what to make of this book for the first quarter of it.
It is about a French family and the aftermath of the wife, mother and grandmother. The characters all tell their own little bit of the story and how they cope with this death.
By the time I was half way I was hooked and finished it well within a day!
I really enjoyed it and was very glad I kept going with it.

Lou and Joe have retired on the island of Groix, just off the French coast, and they are making the best of their lives. Although their son, Cyrian, seems to have very little interest in his illegitimate daughter Apple, being too preoccupied with his precarious marriage to Albane, and their daughter Sarah suffers from a degenerative disease that has left her physically and emotionally vulnerable, Joe and Lou are happy. Until one day, Lou is diagnosed with a rare form of dementia and she moves to a nursing home and dies in her fifties.

After Lou’s funeral, Joe discovers that she has left him a final task: Neither of his children are truly happy, and Lou has given him two months to remedy that. When he has completed that task, there is a final letter for him, sealed in an old wine bottle filled with memories of times past. Unfortunately, Lou’s final wishes divide the family even further, and although a cardiologist by nature, Joe has no idea how to fix the broken hearts of those he holds dearest to him.

Going into this book, I didn’t really know what to expect. The blurb was fairly vague, but it seemed like a heart-warming story about family and relationships, which would be a comforting way to spend a couple of afternoons. I had never read a book by Lorraine Fouchet before, so I had no idea how she would tackle a storyline like this.

All in all, I think A Bucket List to Die For was a good book. The premise of the book was interesting, and I thought Fouchet managed to craft an intriguing book that kept me reading. The story was indeed heartwarming, and it did feature the comforting tropes of healing broken relationships. However, and this is where I struggled a little, I almost felt as if the book was too rose-tinted. Everything was almost too perfect, and things fell together too neatly. The best way I can describe it is almost as if the book were a fable for younger readers told to an adult audience. There was something too neat and too easy about the way the plot slotted together.

Perhaps this is because the book is fairly short, but tried to deal with a lot of problems. There are obviously three main emotional conflicts in the story: Joe losing his wife; Cyrian’s precarious marriage as well as his relationship with Apple; and Sarah’s lack of emotional vulnerability and connection. These three stories in and of themselves would be a lot to tackle in a book that clocks in at about 320 pages, but add in extra conflicts and extra plot lines and I think there was too much happening, which made the story feel a little bit one-dimensional in terms of emotional development.

This being said, though, I think there were some incredibly poignant moments in the book, particularly as it relates to Lou’s dementia and the feeling of helplessness she felt as her memories slipped away from her. The emotional stakes were high at these points, and I appreciated the impact that these developments had on all the characters in the book. I also enjoyed the structure of the prose: each character had a distinct way of speaking, and I found the chapters written as if directly addressing Lou were particularly engaging. This gave an emotional depth to the grief that the characters were feeling which made them feel more real.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, but think that it was slightly underwritten, and too trite and compact to tell the story as it should have been told. The story itself seems to evoke words such as “heart breaking”, but I don’t think the writing fully brought that home; rather, I felt the premise of the story was what was heart breaking and the execution left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. I think there was scope to explore the emotions of the characters more, but the writing style was easy to read and flowed well for the most part. I enjoyed reading the book and thought that even with its faults, it was an enjoyable, fairly easy read that tried to tackle some tricky topics with a tenderness and awareness of the difficulties of the situations. More time to develop the characters into better fleshed-out versions of themselves would have enhanced the experience, but I think that overall, this is an enjoyable read that will satisfy those looking for something that isn’t too heavy and which can be picked up when you’re low on bandwidth and need a read that won’t levy a heavy cognitive tax on you.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for the ARC in exchange for a review.

A Bucket List to Die For is a very well written book. Great plot and character dynamics. I highly recommend this book.

Joe’s wife has died and left him with a challenge of getting the family back together.
A different book to what I’ve read before, took a little while to get into but enjoyable.

This book provides a refreshing unique look at family. After Joe’s wife, Lou, dies, he is tasked by her attorney with bringing the family together, as her last dying wish. His son Cyprian, has an ex wife, a wife and a mistress as well as two daughters from each marriage. Joe’s daughter, Sarah was left at the altar, and suffers from a disability. Joe tries to find out what will make Sarah and Joe happy, and bring them together. Subtle, but beautifully written, I really enjoyed this novel, set in Groix, an island off Brittany. The granddaughters, Charlotte and Apple, are important characters in the story. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Love conquers all in this touching account of one woman’s dying wish to bring her fractured family back together. 3.5⭐️

The island of Groix, lying off the coast of Lorient, Brittany, takes on a character of its own as a setting for a mission impossible. Joe, esteemed cardiologist has recently lost his beloved wife Lou to the ravaging beast that is dementia, aged only 56. Her final request, one that is to remain a secret from the rest of the family, is for Joe to make their children happy, bring a smile to their faces and introduce them to the real meaning of love. By following her instructions the ultimate aim is to unite everyone together in harmony as opposed to the discord that presently keeps them apart. Joe has two months in which to undertake this challenging task and achieve the favoured outcome. How easy, or difficult this proves to be is dependent upon each family member facing up to some home truths and focusing on the positive aspects of each other rather than their foibles.

I loved how the setting is so central to the plot, with so much of Groix history attached to the characters lives. It truly is the beating heart of this novel! The peacefulness of the island when tourist season is over, the sea that has stolen lives and the gulls that cry overhead alongside the intimacy of a small place where there are eyes and ears everywhere is imparted to the reader, sometimes beautifully, other times more bizarrely. This sense of place, its vibrancy and its bleakness, its isolation from the mainland left me feeling the immense power of seduction a setting can hold over a person’s heart. The love (and hate!) Joe and the rest of his extended family feel for the island is palpable with memories of Lou anchoring them to the past, refusing to relinquish its stranglehold over their lives going forward. Some appreciate the way in which Groix is woven into the fabric of their lives whilst others are desperate to escape its clutches once and for all. It is the ideal place for long overdue reconciliations to take place, with little or no distractions to derail the healing process and I enjoyed the quirky aspect of this storyline whose essence of hopefulness and happiness shines through. Yet reading this novel for me was akin to watching the tide ebb and flow. Some parts are much easier to read than others for a variety of reasons. The multiple points of view are distracting with too many voices fighting to be heard; I found myself constantly rechecking who was currently speaking in an attempt to keep abreast of developments. This interruption to the flow of the narrative is further hampered by the way in which the author digresses into irrelevant detail, bombarding me with references to musicians and filmmakers that washed right over my head. Of course that’s not the fault of the author if I fail to recognise and or understand the relevance of these musings, but it’s an unnecessary and unwelcome distraction. However I appreciated the sentiment of what is an uplifting storyline, even if there were occasions I felt completely nonplussed!!

The author portrays each individual character well, noting the myriad of ways in which their grief impacts upon their behaviour and their dreams for the future. I quite liked this fractured family,a typically dysfunctional one in need of reminding that love conquers all, (I’m not entirely sure I agree with this sentiment but for the duration of the novel I was happy to go with the flow!) Headed by the distraught, all at sea Joe, whose fondness for conversing with his deceased wife in moments of uncertainty is a man on a mission, his love for this island tattooed on his soul. Harder to like are Joe’s son Cyrian, a terrible husband and even lousier father to daughters Apple and Charlotte and a jealous brother of his more professionally successful sister Sarah. Neither children are lucky in love, unlike their parents, with Cyrian’s overprotective wife, Albane the least likeable character, especially when compared to the stoic Maelle, Cyrian’s ex partner and mother of daughter Apple. Sarah, after having her heart spectacularly broken now prefers casual dating rather than embarking on more meaningful relationships. In a storyline that favours inclusivity as opposed to separation, as the mission gathers pace you view some of these less desirable individuals in a new more favourable light, a pleasing if predictable element to the tale. Perhaps the strongest voice of all, echoing from beyond the grave is Lou, her spirit guiding the family through long held resentments and recriminations, giving the reader a valuable insight into her personality that remains forceful even after death. But really it is the whipsmart, sweet and charming Apple and her not so innocent cousin Charlotte that are ultimately responsible for uniting this family.

With only a finite number of stories to be told, this tale of redemption, forgiveness and reconciliation is relayed in a distinctive way. It possesses a certain charm, a tenderness and a poignancy that you would automatically expect from this type of novel but there were plenty of occasions when the author left me baffled and bemused. Hidden beneath the layers of peculiarity is a sweet gem of a novel waiting to be discovered if you can cast aside the driftwood and focus instead on the heart of the matter; love. In my opinion this one requires perseverance! My thanks as always to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review.

It was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Gives you insight on what it’s like to deal with grief and the family dynamic of losing someone. Though I didn’t connect with the writing style and it was slow in the beginning, I do think this is a great book, especially for people who are able to relate.

I loved A Bucket List To Die For and was hooked from the very beginning. I couldn’t put the book down!

Fouchet does a great job bringing each character to life after the death of their wife/mother/grandmother. You truly hurt for Joe, loath Cyrian and Albane, and fall in love with the island of Groix.

The story from beginning to end is heartwarming, tragic, and happy. Fouchet has an amazing way of writing and twisting the story so you want to keep reading to know more and seamlessly ties everything together.

I liked that the story was written as if each character is talking to Lou, who has recently passed. It reminded me of the writing style in The Push and I think that my be my new favorite style.

I will recommend this book to anyone looking for a heartwarming story with some heart racing moments to keep you on your toes!

Thank you to @netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for sending me this ARC for my honest review!

I am so glad I stuck with this book. I really struggled to get into it at the beginning, this was due to my personal feelings and not the book.

This book opens your heart up and it's such a lovely family book which can't help but make you smile towards the end.

I feel like this book shouldn't work with more many different character perspectives we read the story from but I strangely think it actually worked.

It's a rollercoaster of emotions but one that's definitely worth a ride ☺️

This is a well written, heartbreaking and poignant story that move me to tears and kept me reading.
I loved the well thought characters and the tightly knitted plot.
It's highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Wasn't completely convinced when I started reading this book but I soon got into the rhythm of it switching between the characters so that they could give their interpretation of events.
The family appears , for a number of reasons, which will become apparent, to have been a bit dis-functional during the Mother's life . However, they do modify their behaviour to each other after her death.
It is an engaging read

This is a very emotional read, heartwarming, sadness but also happiness. It is well written, and told from the perspective of each family member as they try to come to terms with the death of their Wife/Mother/Grandmother.
It shows how different people cope with grief in their own ways. It also shows how some family dynamics are far from happy.
It was a good book, not one that I probably would have chosen to read, but I was invited to read an early preview copy. I am glad that I read it. Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC.

Joe's wife, Lou, has died from a rare form of dementia. She has left behind a challenge for him, to reunite their estranged family. She has given him two months to achieve this task and to help him she has left behind a list of activities and recipes.

The narrative is told through multiple viewpoints and spans a couple of months. The characters are expertly created and the plot is original and clever. This is both a heartwarming and heartbreaking novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Emotional, heart wrenching, this book had everything, Even though it was a little sad in places, I thoroughly enjoyed it

A bucket list to die for... is a well written family drama about how Joe,a widower, is tasked by his now dead wife in her will, to bring together their family who have been separated because of internal strife, misunderstandings and plain stubbornness.
The book is a warm hearted story and we are not left with bitterness of a family fight and knowing that that each person is fighting their own insecurity we are inadvertent left cheering on the family patriarch to resolve these disputes and get together again. Humorous, lovable and a feel good story which is definitely recommended. A good book to curl up and enjoy the weekend.

I recieved an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased feedback.

Sadly I found this book really hard to read or get into. I am not sure if it is the translation to English or the style of writing.
The story sounded great but I just wasn't hooked in and stopped reading after a few chapters. I felt like I was reading madness which I felt uncomfortable with.
I won't be reviewing elsewhere as I didn't want to finish reading the book, so feel it wouldn't be fair for the author.
Thank you for the early read opportunity.

I have never read anything by Lorraine before, but an ideal opportunity from NetGalley. This is a truly stunning book with some heart-breaking moments balanced with heart-warming ones.

What a beautifully written story. This story is told from multiple points of view from many members of Joe’s family. Joe’s wife, Lou, dies and leaves a sort of bucket list for Joe to complete. This book shows how different people, of different ages, deal with grief and how they find their way to reconnect with each other. The setting was the Island of Groix and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the cameras online since reading this. Lorraine is a new author for me and I look forward to reading more from her in the future. Really enjoyable read.

I suppose you could call this a family saga , seen from the perspective of different family members (and others) , the main character is Joe, recently widowed. Having been a surgeon, he has had a life of working to the detriment of the relationship with his children. This book charts their relationships and journey through their grief with a Bretan island as their base. The past is revealed gradually.
Mostly I liked the writing style, though some parts of the story seemed to be taking parental influence to extremes. Thoughtfully written, I did like the characters. I have seen criticism that some readers felt that there were too many characters, but I did not find that to be the case. Descriptions are nicely done . My one criticism would be that the childrens' voice does not always ring true, but not to the extent that the story is spoilt by this.
Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review