The Paris Apartment: A Novel

Favorite character? The cat. Pros: flashbacks are not long, both minor & major plot twists, unpredictable, short chapters Cons: slow burn, lack of numbered chapters, unnecessary details This would be a nice limited series on Netflix. I say ummm about 4 episodes is all that is needed. PLOTWIST!! Ok.....Now that I have calmed down, I believe I am ready to provide a very honest review. No spoilers, well maybe some lol. This book won our bookclub vote for our April pick. https://bookclubs.com/bad-bitches-with-books/about-our-club When I started this story I knew from the summary that there would be a lot of interesting characters, but babbbbyyyyyy!!!! Little did I know these characters would stress me out so bad. So what did we know off top? We knew Jess was leaving her life and wanting to go live off her brother basically for some reason. Ben was missing when she arrived and his neighbors knew something, but weren't giving her much info. Cool, cool & real cool. Let's find Ben. The Paris Apartment takes place over 3 days. However, I felt trapped in a time loop as if I was reading Tenant. I was upset that each chapter was labeled with only the name of the character narrating the chapter. As this is a bookclub pick, it is not easy to refer back to the chapter something was mentioned if you did not write down the page number and each character had several chapters. We love short chapters, but some could've been combined let's be real. Now the story starts off great with a bang drawing you in, that I admit. Ben is expecting Jess and giving her instructions upon her arrival. Only to suddenly not be there when she arrives. Here Jess is all alone running away from something and arriving at her brother's apartment only to wait aimlessly while strange people watch her every movement. However, after that it is a really slow burn. The build up started to lose me because Lucy created so many different "sub" mysteries deviating our minds momentarily from Ben's disappearance. I found myself saying, "who?" "when?" "what day is it?" "where did this character come from?" forgetting about poor Ben and needing to go back and re-read sections. It was just a lot of nothing going on in the beginning and middle leading up to the climax which did not come until the last 50-100 pages. During this time, we finally learn a lot more about these eccentric characters and how close neighbors can be despite their initial appearance. The socialite – The nice guy – The alcoholic – The girl on the verge – The concierge I attempted to follow the clues and was sent off several times walking into yet another discovery that presented another mystery while at the same time, not solving any. Even though I feel there could've been way less mysterious additions, I did enjoy unraveling most at the end. Lucy answered all questions except, how did Jess and Ben's cat do so well without eating this whole time? lol

I loved The Hunting Party. The Guest List was subpar. The Paris Apartment has taken Foley off my radar completely. Jess escapes a mysterious past in London and flees to Paris to stay with her brother, Ben, until she can get on her feet. When Jess arrives at his apartment, Ben is not there to let her in, despite his voicemail saying he would wait up for her. Shortly after entering the apartment, Jess was knocked unconscious. When she awoke there was no concern for who had knocked her out and left her bloody; just the urge to curl up in bed and hope Ben would happily turn up the next morning. Two days later, still no sign of Ben, Jess expressed concern about feeling like she was being watched...what even was going on and what were this girl's priorities? This all transpired in the first 15(ish)% of the book and left me detached and uninterested in the rest of the story. I stuck with the book only because I had to lead a book club discussion about it.

This book is comical. I mean, in the sense that it's ridiculous of course.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narration was the only thing that kept me going. The narrators were the best part. The book had a good start, and it hooked me in then... The story is flat, dull, uncreative, the build up for the suspense is not worth it. Nothing happens, besides all the characters going over internal monologues which they turn around into Ben, and then reflect it back onto themselves. Most of the action is crammed up into 40 pages... It's all cliche.

Even towards the end, theres still build-up of the events and no real unraveling of watching them happen. I had to chuckle when Mimi found Ben's journalistic investigations and the author doesn't even describe what she reads, its like "Oh no!" *drumroll* next character.

I didn't even like Jess, the whole time she's checking out how rich people are, how much can she steal (from a place she is temporarily living in) sizing up Nick and how rich he is and how much she wants to kiss him. From that to screwing some stranger she just met. She just reeked of trash and desperation, and quite honestly it was another cliche. Every character is a cliche, with a cliche story.

I wanted to DNF this one halfway through, but stuck it out because of the narrators. Quite honestly, I was a tad bit desperate towards the end to just finish already. The ending was cliche too.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Love the ending