Feature Story in the Los Angeles Times:

"[Ollivier is] ideally suited to contrast and compare the two cultures that seem to fascinate -- and irritate -- each other."
Los Angeles Times
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"A Gallic prescription for living a life that is richer, more sensual, messier, and a lot more fun."
Boston Globe
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"Ollivier is sure to dazzle any reader with a fondness for French women with this batch of anecdotes and corresponding hypotheses, drizzled with a winning combination of sarcasm and wit."
Publishers Weekly
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Publishers Weekly Best Books 2009
Audio Reviews

Ollivier's manifesto belongs in that rare class of books that must be listened to on audio rather than read in print. Her performance of her own book is so delicious and pitch-perfect that it demands a hearing, if for nothing else than the hilarious recounted conversations between herself and various French female interlocutors, whom she presents with a faultless blend of Gallic style and nonchalance. Her accent is impeccable—to American ears, anyway—achieved during a decade of living in France and being married to a Frenchman. As she wends her way through love, sex, food, sex, child-rearing, sex, politics, and more sex, Ollivier compares American women's neuroticism and anxiety to French women's devil-may-care attitude. Vive la difference!
Pubishers Weekly

"Why is it everyone finds French women so sexy? Why are French women so fascinating? Why so chic? Why so thin? Ollivier has some answers..."
The Washington Post
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"Les French Women n’ont pas fini de faire jaser. Debra Ollivier révèle à ses consoeurs américaines ce que savent les femmes françaises sur la passion dans son nouveau livre What French Women know, about love, sex and other matter of the heart and mind."
French Morning
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"We all know about the French paradox when it comes to food, but what about everything else? An intriguing new book on the subject of love and life is What French Women Know. Narrated by the author, the book is a real eye-opener..."
Audio Review
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"French women, ridiculously famous for not getting fat, also know the secret to appreciating men, being at home in their own skin, enjoying sex, food, parenting and accepting with esprit the imperfections of living. What French Women Know is a sharp-eyed and witty examination of the French mystique – a fascinating alternative to how we Americans view love and sex.”
Karen Karbo
author of How To Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great


"A clever, liberating book. Ollivier upends the conventional wisdom on relationships and offers a more realistic, more playful and surely a more satisfying model…If we all just followed Ollivier's sage advice, the battle of the sexes could be declared a truce."
Pamela Druckerman
author of Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee


Delightful and instructive. Debra Ollivier has written a smart and sexy book that finally explains why French women are so ....smart and sexy.”
Julie Barlow
co-author of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong and The Story of French


"Every American woman over 21 should read this book--a 12-step program for living La Vie En Rose.  Written with arch intelligence and light-handed irony, Debra Ollivier's uncanny understanding of the French woman is apparent from the start - - it's impossible to put down . Delicious, smart and not at all fattening. Learn how French women do it – put their Carpe before their Diem.”
Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack,
authors of the #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller Literacy and Longing in L.A.


"In What French Women Know, Debra Ollivier, who as an American married to a Frenchman has had plenty of time to study la femme française,   successfully takes on the tough task of depicting the French woman as she is and not as cultural stereotypes would make her out to be:   a relentlessly slim,  self-assured, sexy, exotic paragon of perfection.  By the time  American women reading this informative page-turner finish the book, they may envy - or not envy, like - or not like, the French women but at least they'll have a clear idea of what she thinks about love, sex, and other matters of heart and mind. That include a host of cultural differences, from her relaxed approach to cooking (from scratch), children (not babyproofing her home), and sex (seeing herself as a sexual creature well after the age of 50).  Vive la France and congratulations to Debra Ollivier for penetrating the mystique of what French women know with humor and distance."
Harriet Welty-Rochefort
author of French Toast: An American in Paris Celebrates the Maddening Mysteries of the French


"Combining wit, aplomb and piercing perceptiveness, Debra Ollivier decodes French attitudes about sex, love, gender relations, body politics, and seduction. She reminds us that it is in the presence of the other that we discover ourselves. Accompanying her on the back roads of the French/American cultural divide, is a real ‘plaisir.’”
Esther Perel
author of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence


"(Ollivier) knows how to look at the oo-la-la stereotypes and tease out the reality, how to look at French women in the context of French culture—and she makes you think about how you think about the essential matters of the heart and mind."
Sueky Howard, Bookpage
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