The Paris Apartment

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It is well-known that writing this genre demands a lot of thorough and meticulous research from novelists so as not to misrepresent specific social or cultural norms and to capture the historical details as accurately as possible. So hats off to Ms. Bowen for writing such a memorable and profound story which, according to the Author's Note at the end of the book is inspired by real-life women whose courage and heroics during the war are often overlooked and forgotten. Estelle is Lia's grandmother. Her story will be told in the 1940s. During those chapters, we learned what Estelle was really doing during the Nazi occupation of France, her visits to the Ritz, and her relationship with Sophie, a woman who looks like an ice princess and whose sole purpose left in life is to help bring the nazis down. In terms of the writing, it tries so hard to sound ominous, but it came off as super cheesy to me, which detracted from the atmosphere of the book. I found myself repeatedly wondering, “ Why am I reading this?” i plowed through this book in a day, getting up at 3 am on my day off so i could finish it before starting my other-job work at 5 as i had planned. I was missing the feeling of being in Paris. The building is atmospheric and plays a central role in the plot. But outside of some French and references to famous Parisian landmarks, this book could have taken place in any city.

On the night she is set to arrive in Paris, Jess even has a couple of interactions with Ben via text. This is great, he's definitely not going to turn her away. He puts his phone down on the kitchen counter, voicenote forgotten. Waits and watches dumbly as the door swings forward. As the figure steps into the room.

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THE CHARACTERS – Wow what a group of unreliable and dysfunctional characters we have here!! The main characters and supporting characters are well described, although it does take until the last quarter to fully appreciate who these characters REALLY ARE!!!

With her signature style, Lucy Foley delivers a fast-paced, multi-layered Parisian Mystery here. The twists just keep on coming. My jaw was on the floor for half the book. Aside from the cast of suave, sexy and successful characters, The House Across the Lake is the perfect book for anyone looking for another book that captures the layers of revelations and twisted psychological twists that come with The Paris Apartment. The Better Sister – Alafair Burke A surprisingly subtle but important player in the tale is Paris itself. The bustling city with tourists and boulangeries provides contrast to the apartment building’s quiet seclusion and adds to the frenzied atmosphere of the story with police corruption and riots in the streets. Jess’s ventures into the foreign city are “a breath of fresh air,” showing just how suffocating and oppressive the apartment building really is. Ben’s half-sister Jess needed to flee London in a hurry, and with nowhere else to turn-she pleaded with her half brother to let her come and stay for awhile. He reluctantly agrees but when she arrives, he isn’t home and he isn’t answering her texts.The two-paragraph version: Jess arrives to stay with her half-brother Ben at his apartment in Paris, but Ben is missing. She explores the building which has an extensive wine cellar and meets the various other residents of the building.

Told in rotating points of view, this Tilt-A-Whirl of a novel brims with jangly tension – an undeniably engrossing guessing game.” — Vogue The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in Camilla Sten’s disturbing 2019 thriller book The Lost Village.Lia is determined to find out more. She will go in search of true ownership of the paintings and she will enlist the help of Gabriel, an art appraiser. However, after Katherine goes missing one day, Casey is drawn into a potentially deadly game of untangling how the realities behind this model couple are anything but idyllic. The two women who feature in the WWII time-line, Estelle and Sophie, are fabulous! To say too much more about them would lead to major spoilers. However, both were doing their bit (and then some) in the fight against the Nazis. I worried about them both, and rightly so.

New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door, An Unwanted Guest is the acclaimed 2018 mystery-thriller from Shari Lapena. The book is set in a remote and romantic inn, the dream spot for a romantic weekend getaway. And, I was ENCHANTED as I listened to each character voice their secrets and obsessions to me, in wonderful English and French accents- enhancing the experience. But she seems to make Ben’s neighbors very uncomfortable, as they barely tolerate Jess, her probing questions, and the insinuation into their lives and explosive secrets… Well researched and compelling, the switch from past to present is done seamlessly giving the reader some light-hearted moments in between the more heart-wrenching and suspenseful ones. There are a couple of romantic scenes in the novel but they are not the main focus; rather they serve to add another dimension to the characters making me care deeply about each person's fate. There is no way to read the story without feeling a range of emotions, from surprise to fear to relief to grief and thankfully, also to joy. While the author is known for her historical romances, this is her first foray into historical fiction and in my opinion, it's a resounding success. I love the old building with its hidden staircases, servant passages and a wine cellar. So many secrets....and she has no one to rely on and a language barrier with the local police.The Paris Apartment, however, offers up a completely different group of players-to go along with this foreboding atmosphere and I thought it was the BEST of her three to date! He stops speaking. Hesitates, listens. A noise. The sound of footsteps out on the landing . . . approaching the apartment door. Jess, a Londoner escaping her less-than-ideal job, arrives in Paris to stay with her brother, Ben, only to find him missing. From the very start, every character has something to hide. Foley spends much of the first half of her novel unwinding the threads connecting each character to Ben and their potential motives for his disappearance. The pace is rather slow and focuses more on developing the personalities of apartment building’s inhabitants than on the main mystery at hand. Delving into subplots of roommate drama, affairs, and extortion, Foley takes occasional detours from Ben’s disappearance. Despite leaving the reader impatient and wanting more action, this exposition provides much needed context for the latter half of the novel and builds the tension that makes the ending oh-so-satisfying.