About Books #110: That Night in Paris

Something about not being allowed to leave my house makes me want to run away into all sorts of literary escapes. And lucky for me, that’s exactly what That Night in Paris promised!

I was offered an ARC by Book Sirens in exchange for a review. All opinions are strictly my own.

The story

Note to self: don’t sleep with your flatmate after a curry and three bottles of wine… especially if he’s secretly in love with you and wants you to meet his mum.

Cat Parsons is on the run. She doesn’t do relationships. After ten years of singlehood even the hint of the ‘L’ word is enough to get Cat packing her bags and booking herself onto a two-week holiday.

A European bus tour feels like a stroke of genius to dodge awkward conversations at home. But little does Cat realise that the first stop will be Paris, the city of love itself.

Joined by new friends, Cat has got two weeks, eight countries and a hell of a lot of wine ahead of her. As they discover hidden treasures and the camaraderie of life on the road, will Cat find a new way of looking at love?

The opinion

C – characters A – atmosphere W – writing P – plot I – intrigue L – logic E – enjoyment	6 7 5 6 6 6 2
TOTAL SCORE	5.4

I have to admit, I struggled a bit when trying to formulate what I thought about this book.

On the one hand, the plot was quite promising – a European bus tour, rediscovering an old love, a coincidental reunion, new friendships… It seems to tick all the boxes. And that was actually the case for the way the author, Sandy Baker, described the cities Cat visited throughout this novel. I felt as if I actually did visit Paris, Rome, as if I took a gondola through Venice, hiked a mountain in Switzerland, …

However, the rest of the writing just didn’t strike the right chord for me. I don’t know if it was just Cat’s tone, if it was the first person-narration… Whether it was the constant switch of tempo between phrases that lasted paragraphs and others that just would not go over 3 words. All of them. The one. After the other. Completely breaking up. The natural flow. of the story. (you know what I mean)

Unfortunately, my least favourite character turned out to be the main one – Cat goes from gushing how much she loves her fellow passengers to snapping and being rude at them, to admonishing herself for that, to completely ignoring herself about it.

The combination of those last two elements certainly took me out of the story a lot, and I ended up having to force myself to keep reading… As I’ve mentioned on here before, though, that might just be due to my personal preferences for writing…

The rating: 2.75/5

As a whole, I did end up quite enjoying the story of That Night in Paris, even if the writing of it was a bit hit and miss for me personally. If you think I’m completely off the mark though, certainly let me know below! (Goodreads)

-Saar