The Paris Apartment
The Paris Apartment
By: Lucy Foley
[This was on my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2022]
“If you know what is good for you, you will stop. You will leave this place. And never look back.”
I recently read Foley’s book The Guest List which was my first of her books.
It wasn’t my favorite and I debated about reading another one of hers, but I decided to give it one more shot since I’d seen so many people recommending The Paris Apartment.
I can’t say it was much better than The Guest List.
It had the same abundance of swearing, crassness, alcohol (wine though because Paris), smoking (because also Paris?), and sex.
It had the same problem of unlikable characters.
It had somewhat the same script: A (potential) crime was committed and an outsider is figuring out what happened and there are several characters with secrets, motives, and opportunities to do said crime.
Here is The Paris Apartment’s cast of characters:
Ben (Third Floor)- the investigative journalist who goes missing from his apartment (in Paris if you didn’t catch on to that yet)
Jess (Ben’s visiting/reckless half-sister who is trying to find Ben)- “Jess is like a homing beacon for trouble: it seems to follow her around.”
Sophie (Penthouse)- “There are things I’ve had to do to get to where I am. Sacrifices I have had to make. People I have had to climb over.”
Mimi (Fourth Floor)- “Everything that has happened here happened because of him.”
Nick (Ben’s friend who got him the apartment/Second Floor)- “I haven’t actually lied to her. Not outright. I just haven’t told her the whole truth.”
Antoine (First Floor)- He doesn’t get his own chapters because he’s pretty much just drunk all the time.
The Concierge (aka the Gatekeeper to the building)- “There are things here that I have to protect. Things that mean I can never leave this job.”
“She thinks that she’s staying in a normal apartment building. A place that follows ordinary rules. She has no idea what she has got herself into here.”
What made this book slightly better than The Guest List was that it had more action. There was movement. There was more than one day and one location.
And we could solve the mystery ourselves. The Guest List starts with a murder but you don’t know who, so how can you really solve it? But in this book we know that Ben is the one missing. So we can look at characters through their relationships to him to figure out what happened to him and for what reasons.
I actually liked the plot concept and found it suspenseful. I didn’t have it all completely figured out and a couple reveals I wasn’t expecting.
But all the other content just overshadows it too much for me. And I didn’t like Ben so it’s always a bummer when the ‘victim’ is not someone you care about finding.
I tried, Lucy Foley, but I won’t read any more of your books until they creep down into the PG-13 tier of books. The rest is just not necessary.
I would like to share my favorite part of the book.
It’s when Jess finds out that Ben’s friend Nick’s last name is Miller. Nick Miller. And her name is Jess. And they’re sharing an apartment building. And I knew right then and there that this was all just a classic Winston prank gone too far.
In conclusion, this book was not for me. I know it’s super popular but, again, as with The Guest List, I think other people’s threshold for swearing and sex is a great deal higher than mine. If that describes you, then you may like this book, but otherwise I would find a different author.
Bonus new British term: voicenote (voicemail)
Bonus new English term: Apparently there is ‘discreet’ and ‘discrete’. I thought it was a misspelling at first because I had only known of the first word (meaning careful/guarded). The latter term means distinct/separate.
[Content Advisory: many many f-words, s-words, c-words, etc; sexual content; multiple LGBTQ characters]
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