It took me a while to get around to reading this and I’m so cross with myself about it. Once I eventually picked it up, I devoured it in a few hours.

This is the story of Blanca, the ghost of a 14 year old girl who resides in a monastery in Valldemossa, Mallorca. When the story begins, the monastery has been abandoned - until two strange foreigners, Frederic Chopin and George Sands, move in along with Sands’ children in 1838.

What follows is a beautiful character study and a fascinating exploration of a brief stretch of time; the four month long stay in Mallorca involves Blanca’s growing obsession with Sands along with her exploration of the past and futures of the characters and a slow unravelling of her own short life centuries prior.

It’s a really unique portrayal of supernatural involvement with the living, as well as a powerful and introspective commentary on love, lust, obsession, power, mortality, societal expectations about gender and the potentially fatal consequences of not adhering to social norms. There’s also some breathtaking descriptions of Chopin’s music in here too.

Overall I’d highly recommend!

I loved reading about these characters. This was an exotic, sensual, clever book that stayed with me long after I finished reading it. Sun-soaked but never frivolous, it was a dream. I’d highly recommend it.

An absolutely delicious book. The ghost conceit could so easily have gone wrong but Nell Stevens does it so well. Sad, haunting, romantic, a bit sexy. Ones of those books that demand to be read slowly. Gorgeous.

4.5⭐️ // ARC provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was so unexpected in so many ways! Having the ghost of a teenage girl as a narrator, as a plot device, is a completely 10/10 choice that added so much character and nuance into the story.

Centring on a lesser known part of history (George Sands and Chopin falling in love and spending time in the Mediterranean for Chopin's health) gave the author so much freedom here to be creative, which I really loved. The flitting perspectives, the jumps in time - everything led itself to a really well-rounded and gripping story, with George and the narrator mirroring and foiling each other at every turn.

I have to admit that I did find some of the 'present' storylines a bit static in places, and I didn't wholly buy into George and Chopin's relationship (but maybe that's because I was rooting for the ghost girl, aha). Despite this though, I had a really great time with this one overall, and I'll definitely be looking out for whatever they publish next!

This was a really interesting and original novel. I enjoyed both the main story and the flashbacks into the ghostly narrator's own life. Although I'd heard of George Sand and her relationship with Chopin, I knew very little else about her before reading this book.

It's a clever take on the omniscient narrator, using the ghost of a teenage girl who died in 1473. Blanca, the ghost, observes George Sand as she arrives in Mallorca with her two children and her lover, Chopin.
I love the idea and I liked the way Blanca's own story appears. Somehow I found all the characters quite distant though and despite Blanca being able to hear and feel their thoughts it remained quite abstract. I found it imaginative but a bit...cold.

3.75 stars

“What is desire, without a body to have it in?”


This novel follows a cast of historical characters as seen through the eyes of Blanca, a ghost who is haunting the Valldemossa town in the Mallorcan countryside. Simultaneously, we watch the stories of George Sand Frederic Chopin and Blanca unfold in a poetic prose that conveys an ever present sense of intimacy. This is a book more about sensations and feelings rather than a central conflict therefore it might be not for everyone's taste, but in my opinion this is a beautiful piece of literature nonetheless.

I found Blanca's narration to be very intriguing. She not only acts as a watcher like, Death does in The Book Thief, but she also has this ability to directly interact and somewhat influence what is going on in the narrative. Moreover, she is able to read some thoughts of the characters as well as witness their pasts. This is especially true of her approach to George who she is enamoured by. I also found it interesting how intimate Blanca gets with all the characters whether it is laying in bed with them as she listens to their internal monologue for how personally she gets invested in their struggles. I love when you can get to know a character through their style of narration and that is definitely true of how Blanca is written.

I must also remark on the prose itself. Stevens has a true talent for writing in a form that suits the tone and mood that she wants to get across. This results in a very atmospheric read where you can feel the moist Mallorcan air as well as the stale scent of Chopin's sickbed. As already remarked, the narration is very intimate and it is highlighted by Stevens ability to describe the minute details in a way that's not overbearing but makes you feel just like Blanca: getting close to every single protagonist and yet not being able to interact with them as they are creations on a page.

The reason why I don't rate this higher is because I am not certain of what the central exploration is of the story. I am unsure if it is love, if it is perspective, if it is the significance of time. All these things are heavily present in the fabric of the narrative and yet I'm not sure which one I was supposed to pay the most attention to since all of them are delicately touched upon yet not intricately enough pursued. That being said, I thought it was interesting how this is a book that recenters a heavily male dominant event in history (Chopin's creation of the Raindrop Prelud) focuses on George Sand and her emotions as she watches her lover fade away and her family fall apart. My rating would be higher if such a theme would be more apparent to me simply because on the other hand I don't have an upbeat tempo to keep me interested in reading for longer periods of time.

Either way, I really enjoyed this read and I highly recommend it to lovers of music (the descriptions of music and composing or breathtaking) and people interested in this premise of a ghost slowly falling in love with a female novelist.

What a weird but wonderful book. We have a centuries-old ghost (Blanca) who falls in love with George Sands, the very-much-alive and very-much-a-real-person lover of the composer Chopin.

There is no real plot. Instead we watch and observe with Blanca, remember with George, and explore the lives of these three people. We get to know George through both Blanca’s eyes and her own, and slowly peel back the layers of the characters’ lives. It would have been nice to have slightly stronger arcs for the characters – I definitely got to the end and felt like nothing had happened – but the they are all depicted in a very engaging way.

The prose is effortless; you can’t help but get swept up and transported into the story. The writing was beautiful without being dense and regardless of your thoughts on the plot or characters it is an undeniable joy to read. It’s historical fiction, it’s literary fiction, with a heavy dose of magical realism to tie the whole thing together.

I received a free copy for review from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Brilliant concept for a novel, but definitely requires the reader to be familiar with the time span and the real characters mentioned for full effect. I'm not sure if I'd classify this as literary fiction at times (what I primarily read and what I had believed the book to be), however it does work well as historical fiction. I very much look forward to reading Nell Stevens next novel.

I’ve been trying to think of how to describe or even review this book… I enjoyed reading it but at the same time I feel conflicted over it because there wasn’t too much in the way of plot.
Sapphic mc’s are my favourite so I obviously enjoyed that aspect!
Not too sure about the ending though.

This was such a treat to get into - I love interesting, well developed female protagonists who aren't necessarily the hero. It's great to see women written as every shade of person, even the disturbing kind. Lovers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Lara Williams will want to check this out

This did not end up being the surrealist romance I was hoping it would be. I found it difficult initially to keep track of who Blanca was talking about, the characters were all so dimensional (which given the main characters were real life people was a little disappointing) and interchangeable. I thought I would experience a longing, an ache from Blanca (as a ghost) being on the outside of everything but desperately wanting to be involved in these people's life. Instead it was like reading very dull diary entries, "Chopin did this today..." I much preferred the chapters from before Blanca died and what proceeded her afterlife, but even that was written without much drive.
Sad, as I was looking forward to this one.

Think The Lovely Bones, but with less trauma, more hope, more sass, a queer love storyline and a historical angle... Enjoyable narrative with some lovely prose.

Due to sexual content, would not recommend to below mature Yr11.

Briefly, A Delicious Life

I will be honest - you had me with the title and the cover. The addition of this being a sapphic, biographical, ghost story is just icing on the cake. As soon as a new Sapphic Historical Fiction book its the scene I HAVE to read it and this did not disappoint.

This book was, as the title described, delicious. A sensual exploration of the senses, through our ghostly protagonist we explore the warm sweetness of life, the delicate brush of love, and the bitter confusion that is death. Our story centres around a dead girl, who has wasted away centuries watching others live. She feels things only through those who have not met their inevitable fate. Then she meets George Sand a woman who jump starts our protagonists need to live even when she has been long dead.

Not only are we given a beautiful glimpse into the very real life of George Sand and Frederic Chopin and their controversial but equally gorgeous relationship, but we are given a reason live inside an uneventful few months in the couples life. The two, with George’s children, escape to warmth of Mallorca in the hopes to improve Chopin’s failing health. At first they are met with slight warmth and acceptance but soon the locals start to fear the unique family, with George often sporting mens clothing and her children loud and unnerving to the outsiders. This alongside Chopin’s worrying health - the locals do everything the can to scare the family away. The only local that seems to accept them is the one they cannot see. Blanca has been dead for too many years to count and has fallen in love again and again with members of the living - but she has never seen someone like George Sand before.

Through the eyes of their ghostly lodger we are allowed to live, intimately, inside this families life. We taste freshly fallen fruit, feel warmth of the autumn sunshine, hear frightfully beautiful melodies coming from Chopin’s piano, and smell salt against George’s skin. This novel is so intimate and intricate it can almost feel like too much, but when it does the author pulls back with a dash of humour, a moment of revealing dialogue or a complete jump in time. As we find out more about this unusual family, we also discover more about Blanca and how she ended up dead and all alone. The painted scenes of domesticity, long arduous illnesses and the terror of being very much alive and very much dead are spread across a novel full of life and colour.

Read if you enjoyed books like ‘Our Wives Under The Sea’, ‘Devotion’, or ‘Written On The Body’.

Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens is inspired by the true story of Frédéric Chopin, George Sand and her children, who travelled to Mallorca in 1838 in the hopes that the warm weather would provide some respite for Chopin's tuberculosis. In Stevens' version of this story, the villagers turn against the family, and while Chopin works on his preludes, their trip looks like it's heading for disaster. The story is narrated by Blanca, the ghost of a teenage girl who died hundreds of years previously, and who develops a sapphic yearning for George Sand.

The novel has a unique concept, and, honestly, I wasn't sure if "queer ghost narrating a fictional version of a famous composer's life" was going to be my thing, but turns out it absolutely is. Exquisite and brilliant and delicious, I was captivated by the prose and storytelling, and am already looking forward to Stevens' next offering.

Thank you to Picador for an ARC of this book.

strange and beautifully written. my interest in it - gay, ghosts - was present but seemed at odds with what the narrative actually was, which is more of a study of the character and era. I would recommend this as a book to read in one or two goes - there can be chapters where the mood gently shifts but nothing happens plot wise and so it can be hard to pick the book back up. that being said, I didn't finish it before the archive date here, and wanted to finish it enough that I then bought it. this feels like quite a negative review but it's not intended to be, more an acknowledgement that it's worth thinking about if this book is for you.

An unusual love story between the ghost of a girl and George Sand. A well plotted and riveting story that kept me turning pages and made me discover a new side to this famous writer.
I loved how the author mixed ghost story, romance, and historical fiction and loved the style of writing.
An excellent read, highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

An intriguing and unique tale about a female ghost that falls in love with a female writer who is Chopin's lover. Such a clever premise for a story and with a great writing style this keeps you guessing all the way to the end.

A Sapphic ghost love story that follows the romance between George Sand and Chopin? I wanted to love this so much, but unfortunately it just fell flat for me and I found it a little dull.

Told from the perspective of Blanca, a 14 year old ghost who died centuries ago and has spent her existence since haunting the monks who live in the Charterhouse in Mallorca, amusing herself with petty little acts against them, the narrative switches back and forth between her life and death in 1473 and the events in the 19th century. George Sand, her two children and Frederic Chopin arrive to stay in the monastery to try and improve their health over the winter.

They immediately stand out as different, with Sand scandalising the small minded locals by wearing trousers and being unmarried, and Chopin scaring them all half to death with his ill health which they immediately put down to contagious consumption. Blanca falls in love with Sand, and becomes obsessed with the family. With an ability to insert herself into the mind of a living person and read their memories, she learns Sand's backstory - a woman before her time she doesn't seem to fit in anywhere, although has forged a successful career for herself as a writer. This is interspersed with the story of Blanca's untimely demise. Both women suffer at the hands of men, who cannot measure up to their expectations and needs and leave them craving the company of other women.

Not much actually happens throughout and the story is meandering and I found myself losing interest at parts and wanting to skip forward to the action, but no action really happens. The writing is beautiful at parts, but it wasn't enough to hold my attention fully. I don't mind books which are character driven rather than plot driven, but I didn't understand why Blanca had remained as a ghost when there appeared to be no other ghosts around, Sand frustrated me with her lackadaisical approach to life, Maurice was non-descript, Solange was a bit of a brat and Chopin only featured briefly to cough up blood then retreat weakly back into his room.

The ending was a bizarre contradiction of petering out and ending abruptly, and I was left wondering what the point of the whole book was.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

Never fall for men of artistic genius. They always end up boning down on your daughter.

In any case, this book is intriguing, but it had the problem you always get around the fictionalisation of real-life events—which is that life rarely offer satisfying conclusions. It just kinds of ends, and if you’re lucky something vaguely sensical can be shuffled from the leftovers.

Briefly, A Delicious Life, then, is a fictionalisation of the Withnail & I-esque holiday/honeymoon George Sand and Chopin attempted to take in Mallorca, and it’s narrated by the ghost of a 16th century girl who is haunting the rundown monastery where George and Chopin are staying. Blanca, our narrator, is in love with George, George and Chopin are, of course, in love with each other (for the moment), they’re also in love with art, and then there’s George’s two children to contend with. Add in Chopin’s whole dying-of-tuberculosis deal, the terrible weather, hostility from the Catholic locals who initially exploit and then attack the family and, well, it’s quite a story.

Although it’s a story that doesn’t … go anywhere. Or rather, it’s a story that ends with George and Chopin continuing with their lives because, well, see above re the problem of writing about real people. The book is, however, a fascinating character piece. I can’t really attest to its accuracy but given Chopin is kind of a pill and George is completely compelling I was personally convinced. Having Blanca for a narrator manages to give the book both a sense of intimacy and sense of expansiveness: she is able to directly access people’s thoughts, along with moments from their past and the full tapestry of their future. To some degree she is a little bit of a device, in that it means the book is never tied to a single time, place or POV, but her voice is incredibly engaging and her own small piece of history heartbreakingly banal—a necessary contrast to this story of grand passion between two extraordinary artists that has passed into legend.

I will also note that—unlike some mainstream reviewers—I appreciated the modernity of Blanca’s narration. The book is actually beautifully written: there’s a precision to the language that allows it to convey sensuality, bitterness, suffering, love absurdity, all with equal finesse.

“Chopin began to play. It was something he had begun working on in previous days: a dappled sunlight opening, a break in the clouds, a tentative ray touching the horizon. But the A-flat was running through it now, at first barely noticeable beneath the right hand’s melody, and then louder, increasingly insistent. It became the saddest sound I had ever heard: perhaps you are happy, the music said, and the A-flat, but what about this – this – this. I understood by then that Chopin’s music was the best of him. It was where his loveliness resided. All his better impulses, his tenderness and sadness were there, in safekeeping away from his body, unhampered by the sharp edges of pain and illness, crankiness and frustration and irritability.”

I honestly do know what is up with people that they’ll be, like, okay, 16th century ghost, seems legit, wait “tasked” has been used as a verb, THAT IS A BRIDGE TOO FAR.

Anyway, as you probably already tell, while the book is broadly a ghost story centred on a moment in the lives of two historical figures it has a lot to say about art, and love, and gender, and queerness. I was honestly ready to murder Chopin myself by the half way point. He’s not overtly terrible, really, but he has this absolute and unquestioned entitlement to both art and being cared for, whereas George stays awake deep into the night, because it’s the only time she can get for her own writing, and her own self-care, really. I mean, obviously, Chopin is terminally ill and (assuming we’re not still pretending that Chopin, the man who wrote sexy letters to other men, was definitely definitely uncontrovertibly straight in every way) queer, but there’s still this impossibly huge gulf between the way his music—his need for sex, attention, goat milk, the perfect piano—dominates the text, whereas George’s writing must always be tucked into the spaces around Chopin, motherhood, her other lovers, a need to support her family, and her place in society.

I did feel, perhaps, the book didn’t entirely know how to end itself or what to do with Blanca once she’d told her story (it’s certainly not a text interested in what it means that it has a ghost in it, which—honestly—is fair enough). Or perhaps it was just that the emotional intensity had reached such pitch, with Chopin finally able to piano and yet also about to die maybe and angry Catholics descending on the monastery, that a vague sense of anti-climax was inevitable. After all, as I pointed out in the opening of this review, that’s kind of the problem with life as a whole.

Still, an unusual and exquisitely told story that has done nothing to subdue my long-standing crush on George Sand.