A review by silver_lining_in_a_book
Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 
The women that survived me! They stepped out of their houses into the daylight and if I'd had any breath I would have been breathless at the sight of them. The hands of women. The ankles of women. The voices of women as they called to each other across the square.

This is a very interesting and original take on historical fiction. The perspective of a bisexual young ghost who has been wronged by the boy that she loved and now finds comfort in the presence of strong independent women is not one that I have seen before. All in all, I enjoyed the reading experience and found that I learned a lot about Chopin and George Sand as people, which I did not expect to find.

The writing was gorgeous: sensual, intimate and disturbingly explicit. The audiobook was also very well produced and added to the telling of this tale. I enjoyed the fragmented timeline structure - it is something that almost always works for me in books - I was equally interested in both the past and present timelines. Importantly, this book made me interested in checking out more books about Chopin and/or Sand (maybe even her novels)!

Unfortunately, I did have some problems with certain scenes. It is not surprising that Blanca feels used and betrayed by the men around her and she despises the way powerful men abuse that power, and yet, her fascination and objectification of women when she is a ghost troubled me. It is difficult to assign our morality to supernatural situations, but I think that the more intimate of these scenes could have been omitted without negatively impacting the story. I wish that had been done to avoid the problematic area of consent in those cases. 
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