Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nine Americans in Paris. Seven intertwined love stories. One City of Light.

Love Actually meets The Notebook in a tale of love, loss, and finding your way home, all set over the course of one life-changing week in Paris.

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?

These intertwining stories—plus several others—unfold over a few breathtaking spring days, as an unforgettable group of Americans in Paris must find their way to their own versions of happily ever after in the City of Light.

I’ve read and loved several books by Kristin Harmel, and she has become one of my favorite historical fiction authors. However, Meet Me in Paris was different, in a positive way, of course.
This time, we get a contemporary story where we get to know different characters, all their stories intertwined in some way, set in the beautiful backdrop of a city like Paris.
This book made me feel, and it made me cry. It’s beautiful. I loved the various characters, each with their own lives and problems. Some stories were harder to read than others, and there were some bittersweet parts, but isn’t that how real life is anyway? I especially loved Henry’s story.
As the blurb for the book says, it is a twist of Love Actually meets The Notebook, and it definitely felt that way, but in Kristin’s style of capturing the essence of the characters. I also appreciated how much love for Paris was woven into the story. It is one of my favorite cities, and to know that more people feel that way about a city is an amazing feeling.
I finished this book with tears in my eyes (I could hardly see the Kindle screen), past midnight, but with a heartwarming feeling that only great stories can give us.

DRC received via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

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