Review: Paris by the Book

Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Paris by the Book is the story of a woman who has lost her husband--or at least that's what everyone is saying, though she and her two daughters are not convinced. They go halfway around the world to Paris, work at a bookstore, and yet still feel that Robert is nearby, though they have no evidence to corroborate that.

This is a book you have to have patience with. No matter how much you love the sense of mystery, no matter how much you may love to read books about Paris, the narrator can get annoying. She loves to tell stories, though she spends too much time explaining rather than just getting to the story. She backtracks to explain things, she heads forward and then back again. It all adds to the confusion that she feels, of course. It also goes a little meta by putting a novel within a novel, and some readers just don't like that.

The book also relies a lot on two things: the Madeline series of books and the movie The Red Balloon. If you are not familiar with either of these, you lose a bit of the overall correlation between these works and how they impact the story. Overall, though, if you like a slow burning mystery without a huge twist (there is one, but you do see it coming), you'll enjoy this book.

*Book provided by Penguin First to Read

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