Meet Me in Paris - Fiction Review

Goodreads: Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel

Rating: Liked It! (3.5 Stars)
Source: Publisher

Description: Julia Glover has brought her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Piper, to Paris for the first time—but they know it will also be their last trip here together. Julia is dying, and as the mother and daughter desperately try to make memories together as the clock ticks down, the world opens up around them. Piper meets a cute French waiter, who might just understand her better than anyone she’s ever met, and Julia meets a man at a dive bar and struggles with how to tell him the truth about her future.

Rock star Jackson Quick’s glory days are behind him. He had a handful of hit songs thirty years ago, but he hasn’t toured in a decade. This week, he’ll launch his reunion tour in Paris, the city where it all began. But he wants more out of life than being defined by fame. When he meets a woman who finally sees him for who he is at his core, the ground shifts beneath his feet.

Henry McGee has been writing hit songs for decades—including Jackson Quick’s biggest hit, City of Light. But his secret is that every love song he’s ever written is for a woman named Celeste, whom he loved a lifetime ago, when they were both teenagers in Paris during World War II. He has spent eighty years believing she died—but when a letter arrives telling him the opposite, he’s on the first flight to France. Can he break through the haze of her dementia, using the songs he’s written all these years, to remind her of who they once were to each other—and to tell her he came back for her?

Henry’s granddaughter, Melody, has just discovered that her husband of twenty years, Gilles, a French cosmetics executive, is having an affair. When she confronts him, he tearfully apologizes and begs her to forgive him. But can she? And, perhaps even more importantly, does she want to? Or is there a different kind of life out there for her if she chooses to be alone?

Genre: Fiction

Why I Picked This Book:  I really enjoyed a previous book by this author and this looked interesting. 

My Impression: Wow this is a huge cast of characters.  It's seven different stories but each story has its own cast of characters and inhabits its own world that periodically intersect but never touch.  It was surprisingly easy to keep everyone straight.  The stories are a mix of love stories - some familial, some romantic, but all involve the characters learning about themselves.  

I liked all the characters and appreciated seeing them find strength as the book went on.  I also really appreciated that there were no miracle endings but there was a lot of hope.  I loved seeing the stories pass each other and occasionally getting a glance of one event from an outside perspective in another story.  This was a fast read and one I really enjoyed.  

That said, there were SO many characters.  While it wasn't hard to keep them all straight there wasn't a huge amount of character development.  Because of that the characters tended to spend a lot of time speaking in grand statements which made it a little more difficult to connect with.  I enjoyed this book and think the author was very successful in what she was trying to do but I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if maybe there had only been 3 stories instead of 7.

Would I Read More of this Series/Author? Absolutely!  I've enjoyed everything I've read by her and look forward to reading her next book and her backlist.

Would I Recommend this Book? Yes!  While it's not perfect it's enjoyable and cleverly written.

* I received this book in exchange for an honest review. As always my opinions and impressions are completely my own. *