The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

 

If you had an apartment, you could stay in for free anywhere, where would you visit?   I want to go so many places; this is a hard question for me.  I think right now, I would love to stay in an apartment in Vienna.  Paris would definitely be a great place to visit.

In the last two years, I have read and enjoyed The Hunting Party and The Guest List by Lucy Foley, so my expectations were quite high for this new book.  Sadly, this new novel didn’t quite meet my expectations.

On the positive, The Paris Apartment had super short chapters that told alternating viewpoints as down on her luck Jess travels to Paris to stay with her half-brother Ben and discovers he is missing.  What happened to Ben?  His last voicemail makes Jess believe he may have been hurt or killed.  All of his neighbors in the building seem to have secrets and Jess works on trying to figure out what they had to do with Ben.  The book was supposed to be a page turner, but it was really slow for me until the very end.  The characters were all unlikeable and hard to relate to.  I found myself not caring about the missing Ben like I should have.  On the positive, I did like that the characters definitely were painted with shades of grey.  The book did pick up at the end and I found myself intrigued again.  The book did tie up all of the loose ends and had a good conclusion.

I listened to an interview with Lucy Foley on the Book Club Girls Podcast right after I finished the book.  It was a great interview.  It discussed the class and power issues in this novel with the upstairs / downstairs type setting.  Foley had stayed in a building in Paris, and it gave her the inspiration to write this novel.  I also thought it was interesting that she wanted to be Agatha Christie’s Miss Maple if she had to pick any fictional character. 

Overall, The Paris Apartment was a mediocre thriller.  If you are new to Lucy Foley, I recommend The Hunting Party and The Guest List. 

Book Source:  The Kewaunee Public Library