Review: The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
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I was recently in the mood for a mysterious thriller type of book, and The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley just happened to come to my attention, so I decided to dive in and see what this author might have in store for me.
Other reviews of this book have seemed to be either great or not so great. And I wanted to know why everyone was so divided in their opinions of The Paris Apartment.
So, it was time to read it myself.
My review of The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley includes a short summary of the book along with my honest thoughts about it. And as always, you’ll get my three Rs of book reviews. Should you read, reread, or completely reconsider reading The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley?
Contents
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley – Summary
A new locked room mystery, set in a Paris apartment building. What do all these tenants have in common? And what do they have to hide?
Jess is broke, alone, and needs a fresh start because she’s just left her job under less-than-ideal circumstances. She heads to Paris to hang out with her half-brother Ben for a while. Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and she figured everything would look much better from Paris.
Only when she shows up in Paris, Ben’s apartment seems nicer than what he can probably afford, and Ben has gone missing.
Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation and the more she digs the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are a shady bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.
Where is Ben?
Do any of these tenants know what happened to him? Things start to escalate out of control the more Jess questions the neighbors. Can she trust any of them?
Review of The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
The Paris Apartment is the first book by Lucy Foley that I’ve read and reviewed.
I had some mixed feelings about it, but I am eager to read more of her books to see what they are like.
The Paris Apartment – What I Liked
A Paris setting – what’s not to like about that? Although, I must say that I didn’t really feel much of the essence of Paris in this book. It could almost have been set anywhere.
This book was very fast-paced in that the chapters and short and the story is told from multiple points of view. So every single chapter is told from the point of view of a different character.
All in all, the point of view rotates between six different characters who are telling the story, and sometimes they flashback to something that happened at an earlier point in time. Some of them have a much more prominent role and show up more frequently than others.
In addition, there are a few other characters that are part of the story, but who don’t tell the story from their point of view.
I thought the story moved along quite quickly because of the way it was told through all the different viewpoints. It certainly kept me quite engaged in the book.
The main premise of the book is that the main character, Jess, is in Paris to visit her brother Ben, who subsequently goes missing by the time she arrives in Paris. At the beginning of the book that’s really where my focus stayed. But what I loved is that as the book progressed, you saw that there was some mystery there involving her brother Ben, his apartment, and all the tenants of the building he lived in. That mystery just kept building more and more as the book went on.
And finally, we were treated to an interesting twist at the end, and I didn’t quite see it coming.
The Paris Apartment – What I Disliked
Despite the fact that I felt that the book went fast for me because of the short chapters and the story being told from multiple points of view, I thought the story itself lagged a little bit at the start. So that was one thing I didn’t like.
But, I will say that I think the story revved up pretty quickly once I reached the halfway point of the book.
Also, I would have liked to get more “Paris” out of this. Other than being set in an atmospheric old Parisian apartment building, there wasn’t much that said Paris to me. Not that it was really necessary to the story! Just a personal preference of mine.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley – Read, Reread, or Reconsider?
And now, for my three Rs of book reviews. Should you read, reread, or reconsider reading The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley?
Read
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The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley – Conclusion
If you like atmospheric mysteries and thrillers, this is one you probably won’t want to miss.
There is an interesting cast of characters that are intriguing from the first page and as the book progresses you realize that they are quite the shady bunch. I was hooked on this page-turner and those shady characters kept me guessing from the very beginning to the end.
And now I have to see what else Lucy Foley has in store for me. One of her books was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick for June of 2020. Maybe I’ll go with that one next!
