The Museum of Broken Promises
By Elizabeth Buchan
Blurb
Welcome to The Museum of Broken Promises, a place of wonder and sadness. And hope. Inside lies a treasure trove of objects - a baby's shoe, a wedding veil, a railway ticket - all revealing real moments of loss and betrayal. It is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past. The owner, Laure, is also one of those people. As a young woman in the 1980s Laure fled to Prague, where her life changed forever. Now, years later, she must confront the origins of her heart-breaking exhibition: A love affair with a dissident musician, a secret life behind the iron curtain, and a broken promise that she will never forget.
Our Review
There were two reasons why I chose to request The Museum of Broken Promises. Firstly, the concept of the museum reminded me of The Museum of Broken Relationships which I visited in Zagreb a few years ago.
Secondly, because I have visited Prague and other former communist countries and I find the history from that era interesting.
Laure was working as an au pair for a Czech family when she met Tomas, a dissident musician. Laure is naïve and finds it difficult to negotiate the rules of living in a country where everything and everyone is under surveillance. This is made doubly tricky by her suspicions that her employer, Petr, works for the Party.
Years later and a bitter and world-weary Laure is living and working in Paris. She spends her days running the popular Museum of Broken Promises and her nights tormenting herself with memories of her past.
I am not a huge fan of the romance genre, but I found myself becoming invested in the relationship between Laure and Tomas. However, I found the rest of the characters inconsequential.
The relationship between Petr and Laure seemed a little unrealistic to me and the time she spent in Berlin seemed like a bit of an unnecessary addition to the plot.
I found I enjoyed the chapters focusing on her time in Prague with Tomas, but all the other chapters were ones I wanted to skip over.
All in all, I wouldn’t probably buy it for myself but I know people who would enjoy The Museum of Broken Promises.
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 19 Times.
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