Review: All The Summers Between Us by Ingrid Carbonne

 

All The Summers Between Us

Pages: 372

Published: July 2026

Genre: Historical Fiction ~ Edwardian / WWI era / Romance

POV: 1^st person/past  

The Blurb:

He was heir to a world that would never let him keep her.

Belgium, 1911. Désirée Saura arrives at a château in the Ardennes to teach music to an English earl’s daughters — the daughter of a Spanish fortune that can buy her a place in any great house in Europe, but never a name to belong in one. She is the outsider: foreign, Catholic, new money. And there is Percy, the earl’s heir, who loses his heart the rainy afternoon he first sees her.

Across four summers, a forbidden love grows in glances, silences and half-written letters — until the Great War tears their world apart. It takes Percy into the sky in one of the fragile new flying machines, and Désirée into an occupied country, carrying men’s lives in the hem of her coat. Two nations and a casualty list stand between them — and only a music box, a lock of gold hair, and the letters of a man learning to say in another tongue what he cannot say in his own.

Sixty years later, an old woman opens that box at last — to tell the whole truth about the love, the war, and the one thing she got wrong and carried, without knowing it, for the rest of her life.

 

My Review:

The short story: A captivating story of love, duty, and the power of an unyielding heart.

My review: Thank you to Ingrid Carbonne for allowing me to read and review her book, All the Summers Between Us. The Edwardian Era, the Belle époque, the Gilded Age; what a time to be alive. Beneath an aristocracy clinging to its class structure, its elitest lifestyle, its casual sense of supremacy is a heaving mass of humanity yearning, reaching, achieving a better life. Through this period, the Great War rips apart their world, sending shockwaves in every direction. It’s an amazing time period and makes for a splendid setting for historical fiction. Think Atonement, Howard’s End, The Remains of the Day, A Room with a View, and the television show Downton Abbey. In this upstairs/downstairs world, we meet fifteen-year-old Desiree, a young Spanish girl, and her world as told by her eighty-three-year-old self. The story is one of self-reflection, a baring of her soul, a tale of longing, pain, and regret but overall, one of strength. A belief in your value when others look down on you, when you are judged on your pedigree rather than the person who you are.

The story is moving, tender, maddening, and wonderful. I loved it. It’s the musing remembrance of an old woman whose memories are crystal clear, painful yet powerful. Désirée comes from a long line of Spaniards who existed long before there was an England, people who have never held a title but know their place in the world. Her grandmother and mother built her backbone one lesson at a time, forging a girl who understood her worth and her place in the world and does not cave to the pressure of those who believe they are superior to her.

One could call this a historical romance but I think  love story is the better wordage. It's a love story that starts slow, smolders then burns it's way through the pages. It's more than a romance, it's that rare thing when two people know that there is never going to be another love like this one. 

This is not a book for readers who zip through books, who skip descriptions in favor of dialogue, who are only interested in romance. This a book to savor, to curl up with, to spend time with, to soak in the atmosphere, to connect with the characters. I highly recommend this book to readers of historical fiction.

My rating: 5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐stars!

You can find it on Amazon HERE