The Runaway Wife by Elizabeth Birkelund

About the Book

★★★✩✩
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Three beautiful French sisters entrust an American hiker with the mission of rescuing their mother high in the Alps. 

But what if she doesn’t want to be found? 

Recently fired from his high-power finance job and dumped by his fiancée, Jim Olsen has come to the Swiss Alps to clear his head. At the charming Cabane des Audannes, he meets Clio, Thalia and Helene Castellane, who are on a quest of their own: their mother, Calliope, has fled to these mountains to escape her philandering politician husband’s most recent scandal. As snow threatens to descend upon the Alps, the women have come to bring their mother home. 

But the sisters are at the point of surrender; it is time for them to return to Paris. Buoyed by wine and inspired by their beauty, Jim impetuously volunteers to assume their search, but soon realizes that he is in over his head. The Alps are filled with beauty and danger, not the least of which is Calliope’s desire to stay hidden. And all the while Jim finds himself haunted by the memory of her daughters and conflicted in his desire for them.

The Runaway Wife is a story of adventure, survival, and romance—and of a man’s discovery of a world outside his conventional life and a new vision of himself within it.

Elizabeth Birkelund’s The Runaway Wife posed a bit of a challenge for me. Full of adventure, its premise intrigued me, and of course, its alpine setting captured my imagination, but I’m still not quite sure I actually liked it. The more I read of The Runaway Wife, the less I care about the characters - since the plot moves quickly, I never felt like I connected with any of the characters enough. Still, it’s a quick and fun read - readers in need of an easy getaway and adventure, The Runaway Wife could be a good choice for you, even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as I initially hoped.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours, I received a copy of The Runaway Wife and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own. To read other opinions of the novel, click here.

About the Author

Elizabeth Birkelund is the author of one other French-inspired novel, The Dressmaker. As a freelance magazine journalist, Elizabeth was the personal finance columnist for Cosmopolitan and wrote for more than fifteen years for Working Woman, Self, and Glamour, among other publications. She lives in New York City.

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