Book Review #105: The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

After reading 'The Guest List', by Foley, a few years ago, I instantly became a fan. So when I heard that she had a new book coming out, I pre-ordered it so that I could read it as soon as possible.

When Jess goes to stay with her brother Ben in his apartment in Paris, she finds that the apartment is empty and Ben is nowhere to be found. As Jess looks further into her brother's disappearance, she discovers that all of his neighbours seem to have something to hide.

I didn't like this book as much as I wanted to.

For a start, it didn't need to build suspense so much so quickly. Every second chapter at the beginning of the book for quite a long time ends with a resident saying that they don't like Ben. After a while it feels like 'we get it, let's move onto something else', and it took too long to do so. 

Particularly at the beginning of the story, there are so many characters that it can be hard to keep track of who's who.

Because there are quite a few characters, it took me a long time to actually care about any of them.

One of the reasons why I kept reading the book was because I really liked the character of Ben (or, what we heard about him from the people around him). I wanted to find out what happened to him, despite not really caring about any of the other characters.

This book is a lot more generic than Foley's previous two novels. 'The Hunting Party' and 'The Guest List' are two novels that work well together, are really unique, and give you an idea of what the author's style is. While I didn't like the first as much as the second, it still felt like a Lucy Foley novel. This third story feels like something that I may have read before. It just felt really different from Foley's previous works.

None of the characters in the novel are likeable, including Jess and (after a while) Ben. Because of that, I never really invested too much in the story.

There was an interesting twist towards the end of the book that I found really intriguing, and didn't guess. But other than that, everything around the twist wasn't as exciting or engaging as I would have liked. Particularly the ending, which wasn't how I would have liked the story to end.

Overall, I didn't love this book. I would have loved to be truly invested in the characters and their world, but I never quite got there.

2/5