Rated  of 5
by Lora O. (Antioch, CA)
Unsatisfying look at Paris.
I was very disappointed in the book which turned out to be a series of blogs about the year the author spent in Paris with her husband and two children. The author does write well, the descriptions are colorful and she has a sense of humor, but there is no connecting narrative.
Reading it was like reading a facebook description of a vacation. The book does contains a handful of narrative chapters that are much more interesting and show more thought than the blog entries. There is one chapter about the death of a friend I found quite moving. The author writes a lot about her children, ages 15 and 11, and while some of those relate to attending school in a foreign country, most would be the reactions of teenagers anywhere.
I found these blog entries to be very superficial, the writer doesn't seem to be interested in understanding the country she's living in or it's people. Even after a year, she can't communicate fluently in the language. Throughout the book, her major concern seems to be food, fashion and her "bad hair year".
I read every book I can find on living and traveling in Paris - and this is the most unsatisfying. I could not recommend this book and probably would not read anything else by this author, especially since I learned she writes romance novels.
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