It is early in the morning when the men of Cucuron gather for the hunt at the foot of the dark French Luberon mountains. They hunt wild boars. Max isn’t present like he promised to be, but the men don’t give it much thought and start the hunt. The first shots, high on the ridge of the mountain, evoke muffled squealing – but not the squealing of a boar.

Valérie is the last to have seen Max alive. She moves to Paris to forget him. Did she fully understand his final whispered words to her that night? That he couldn’t see a future without her? Valérie continues her studies at the Sorbonne but she cannot get Max and the boar out of her head. In Paris, she meets Jean-Michel, who learns about Valérie’s past in the small village and travels to Cucuron to follow up on the rumours, the gossip and stories to reconstruct what happened on the mountain that fateful morning.

‘Isabelle Rossaert has succeeded in describing how expressive silence can be in her debut novel This Is what I Cherish.’ – The Read Shop, Hedel

‘The romantic soul has returned to literature. The delicate, rhythmic sentences create a pleasant atmosphere. The melancholic characterizations of Paris, in Modiano-noir, are beautiful.’ – de Volkskrant

‘Isabelle writes with passion and love about Paris and Luberon, about a relationship that never was and the development of another one. The author has captured the city and the nature in this romantic and tragic love story. About the comforting beauty of art, taming unicorns, the lure of the mountains and the binding force of love. About life and death, a moving novel... to tears.’ – Psychologies Magazine

‘Rossaert has set an ambitious goal and she succeeded in producing a charming, atmospheric book. You can feel in your gut that the text is good. Why the story provokes this is somewhat inexplicable and that is literature at its best. Isabelle Rossaert is a promising author. This Is what I Cherish is a touching and comforting novel in a delicate language, using the mystique of the rural and the forging strength of word-of-mouth stories.’ – Tzum