My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below
As you can see, nothing. Indeed, I was going to grade the book an A when I finished reading it, but by the following morning, I decided that I needed to knock off a few points for reasons I'll get to below. But really, how can you go wrong with a book set in Paris by one of the most popular French authors of today?
A British actress, Mia having just finished filming a movie with her philandering husband, who's been off somewhere for days, decides to get away to Paris and clear her mind and decide what to do about her life. She stays with her best friend Daisy, a restaurant owner. She still loves her husband, but does he love her?
Then we have Paul, an American ex-architect who, six or seven years earlier, wrote a story that one of his best friends read, and behind his back, got it into the hands of a publisher. Paul reluctantly agreed to release it, its a best seller, but being a very shy person, he flees to Paris to avoid being recognized by fans of the book. He has lived in Paris ever since. There he's written five less successful novels, though, for some reason his books are very popular in Korea, and so he lives mostly on those royalties. He is also in love with his Korean translator, who only visits him in Paris when he's done writing the books.
His story starts when his best friends, a husband and wife, arrive in Paris to visit him. Both sets of visitors to Paris, Mia visiting Daisy, and Paul's friends staying with him, can't resist and peek into their hosts' computers, discovering that each of them has a dating app on it. As a practical joke, Paul's friends arrange for Paul to Mia to meet thorough that dating app, telling Paul it is a business meeting with someone interested in opening a restaurant. A disaster ensues that ignites the slow burn romance.
Regular readers know that I prefer first person narratives to third person stories, dislike multi-point of view stories, and that I am not a fan of stories set in contemporary life, all of which are characteristics of this story. Still, all of the characters, with the exception Mia's husband, are very nice people, which is a great plus for me. The narration is very well written and though in third person, it is close, but not too close, so you're not in every character's head 24-7. The story a rom-com, was interesting enough, and because I liked all the characters, I did not mind the multi-point of view structure, nor the fact that it was set in 2014. Perhaps because it was largely set in Paris, and I love Paris, in theory, anyway, may have contributed to me really liking the story. And, well, I am a sucker for slow burn romances. As I said, it could'a been an A book.
So what went a little wrong?
The ending.
I wrote a year ago how I had come to realize the importance of white spaces in story telling. The things left unsaid. However in this case, when we came to the closing chapters of the book, there was too much white space, too many things left unsaid. One important scene that I think needed to be in the story that was implied, but missing. Indeed, the last 10% of the book struck me more of a sketch of a story than the final version. And yet, even so it included many unimportant scenes making it both sparse and too long at the same time. Plus, the actions of the characters seemed rather iffy... So, in my mind, it didn't stick the landing.
Plus there may've been one rather gaping plot hole, though it did not matter as far as the larger story goes. Still, I hate plot holes. But it all depends on the answer to this question: given that you have an American, Paul, who has been living in France for six years and speaks French fluently (it is never noted what language he is speaking to whom in the book), which language will he use when being interviewed on a Korean TV show by a Korean host whose questions are translated by a translator off stage via an earpiece, and who then translates his answers into Korean for the viewers? (Got that? Korean interviewer-translator-Paul's response-translator into Korean.) If he speaks in English, it's a plot hole, if in French, not much of one. It still bugs me, but given that the author is French, he no doubt thinks of Paul and the scene in French, and if so, the issue I question would be of no great deal to him when writing the story. However, if Paul was answering in English, it would've had significant ramifications for the scene, seeing that something like 50% of Korean understand at least some English. You'll have to read the book to know how it matters.
Still, my few minor gripes aside, a very enjoyable book, especially if you're in the mood for a pleasant romance. I think Paris was a big draw for me, as well as the rom-com nature of the story. That said, I am not sure I'll be reading any more Levy stories before my KU subscription runs out. We'll see.
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