7 Books to Read With a Broken Heart

To Help You Remember: La Vie Est Belle

The French have a knack for living in the moment, and this international best-seller, just out in the States, makes for a lighthearted how-to. In prose that is as refreshing as a glass of Evian (but as addictive as chocolate), author Katherine Pancol plunges us into the world of Joséphine Cortès, a 40-year-old mother of two whose husband takes off with a manicurist on a wild scheme to run a Kenyan crocodile farm, leaving Joséphine practically penniless. She navigates around a hypercritical mother, a limelight-hogging sister and a diva of a teenage daughter. With the help of a few satisfying, if fairy godmother–esque plot twists, she learns that "...Life is like a dance partner...If you just relax and let go, you'll find yourself waltzing." Full of laugh-out-loud moments, the novel illustrates—gently and intelligently—how we have to keep taking tiny steps to create the lives we long for.