The Little Paris Bookshop: A Review

Sometimes choosing a book to review for Blogging for Books is difficult. Their selection changes frequently, and especially now that I really can only read e-books, I'm limited in my selection.

This was not one of those difficult choices. Bookshop? Paris? I mean, all they needed to do was add "wine" somewhere in the title and they basically would have been describing my life. I wanted to read this so much that even though it wasn't available in e-format, I had it shipped to my parents who then brought it to me when they came to visit. I wanted to read it that badly.

Unfortunately, after I'd had a chance to do just that, I realized maybe that was God trying to spare me from this painful book and I should have left well enough alone. The beginning was weird and straight-up confusing. Guy pining after woman for 20 years, a lady moves in across the hall, he brings her furniture, they cook together and have a weird not-love scene, then he hops on a boat and sails down the river, sending new woman postcards. And pining-for woman is dead. It happened so fast, without any explanation, that I frequently had to go backwards to make sure I hadn't missed something. But no, my copy had all the pages. They just weren't very good ones.

The premise could have been so good - a bookseller who "prescribes" books to his customers based on their needs - but in these hands it was confusing and overly wordy. It was as though the author wanted to try to seem "deep" and "thoughtful," getting into these weird rants about life and death and the meanings of things, but she wasn't able to do it. Further, the characters all seemed very flat and one-dimensional - the kiss of death for me when it comes to books.

The verdict: 3 out of 5 stars, but that may just be me being generous because it has to do with Paris and books. Take this one on at your own risk.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.