Before I Met You

After her grandmother Arlette's death, Betty is finally ready to begin her own life. She had given up university, parties, and boyfriends to care for Arlette on the English island of Guernsey. Arlette's will names an unexpected beneficiary, a woman called Clara Pickle, last known to be at a London address, so Betty leaves for 1990s Soho to track her down and, along the way, start over as a nanny for a tabloid-famous rock star.

Interwoven with Betty's search is Arlette's own story: her arrival in 1920s bohemian London as a beautiful, charismatic young woman swept into the hedonistic world of the Bright Young People, and the tragedy two years later that sent her back to Guernsey for the rest of her life.

As Betty gets closer to finding Clara, she uncovers a man who meant everything to her grandmother — and the secrets that shaped Arlette's decades of silence. Before I Met You moves between two eras and two very different women, bound by the same house and the same unresolved past.