I absolutely adored Nell's writing - she made me care about figures I hadn't particularly paid much mind to before, and I'm very excited for her next novel.

The concept of a ghost watching over a new family moving into the home in which she died was really interesting to me. I always think it’s fun to explore things from the ghosts side. However I didn’t find this satisfying in that way. I don’t have much to say about this book. It didn’t impact me massively but I think I’m just not the target audience for this. I think it’s okay for it not to be for me.

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.