The Paris Key by Juliet Blackwell

If what you’re looking for is to live vicariously through a character in Paris for a week, this is the book for you.  You’ve left everything about your life behind in America, hopped a transatlantic flight seducing you with delectable food and French wines, and find yourself in your own furnished apartment in the middle of the antiques quarter in Paris.  French coffee & pain au chocolats for breakfast, long walks along the Seine, beautiful people, cafés, haute couture, cocktails in the afternoon, art, romance, architectural magnificence…what’s not to love?

And that’s exactly why there is such a deluge of novels being written, published, and sold in droves with the bestselling theme of Paris.  Paris as the title of the book.  Paris as the subject.  Paris as the scenery, the backdrop, the “subject” of the book.  “Give the people what they want and they’ll come.”  And, Americans especially, want Paris.  They yearn for it, dream of it, talk about it with reverence, plan to visit someday and cannot imagine a place more glamorous, romantic, or intriguing.

Once you get past the magic of being a part of the city of lights as a reader, you realize with great sadness that this book is not worth your time.  It starts off with the possibility of being a clever read, but as you quickly and disappointingly become aware of there is no substance to it.  There are a couple of plot lines that are started and never finished.  So at the end of the book you’re left wondering, why didn’t the author ever complete her thought?  And the main plotline is so long and drawn out and then at the end of the book it comes to an abrupt end, quickly and unbelievably tying up all loose ends in a pretty little package with a bow.

Unrealistic and an unnecessary read!