The Paris Apartment: A Novel

Very slow burn thriller, but it was a great story in the end. I had to push myself through the first quarter of the book, but then I was hooked and finished it in one morning! All of the characters feel equally important and I really enjoyed that aspect. The plot keeps you guessing and it was fun finding the translations of French phrases. If you like twisty thriller plots - this ones for you!

The characters are well-drawn, the plot believable, the heroine a woman to be admired. Also an interesting, fresh structure with multiple points of view. I would employ the cliché “a real page turner,” but I’ll try a new angle: I was reading this away from home on vacation, and my Kindle charge ran out. Horrors! I HAD to keep reading. I figured out I could put Kindle app and therefore my library on my iPad. Yay! Then iPad ran out of juice. Boo! I came up with a pretty creative solution for how to charge that, because I HAD to keep reading! Footwork not as fancy as our heroine’s, but close. Highly recommend you get this. If you read on a device, charge it up if you’re leaving home!!

Recommend!! This book kept me on the edge of the seat, the way this mystery was unraveling is amazing. I enjoyed this a lot, hard to put down!the structure of different points of view is not new but how the story rapped everything together from the characters story just wow. Can't wait to read another story from this autor.

This book started off really slow for me with the back and forth on the characters POV but once it picked up I couldn't put the book down!!

Lucy Foley's THE PARIS APARTMENT kept me engaged from the very beginning. The development of her characters and their lives made you wanted to know more. The twists and turns were never explained until the right time, and then you were on to the next situation. I would recommend this book to anyone that loves a mystery.

a truly multidimensional read. a little predictable to the end but if you’ve (like me) read a lot of novels from this genre. it takes far longer to become predictable than the average suspense novel.

Loved the writing from each characters perspective. Lots of character building throughout adding more layers as you read on.The book was captivating and offered surprises and twists.

This is one of those books that would make a better movie than book. Chapters too small (typical for the new fiction nowadays, pandering to the techie types who have short attention spans) and too much action and not enough character development. A good read, but this would make a better movie than book.

Suspense. Mystery. Thriller.

This trend of writers starting of books with a really, exciting premise to hook the reader only to deliver an average story has to stop. The novel starts off really good. The premise is amazing - really suspenseful and great. But that soon dies quickly. The story is incredibly slow paced. I was like 200 pages in and still focused on one scene - like it’s so so so slow paced, it hurts your brain. This wasn’t a murder mystery at all (like it’s advertised) it was a disappearance case. All the characters chapters are written in the same way, they are all very different - young girl, a elderly lady, a man, a mother - there is no reason why they should all speak the same. No twists at all, the ending was guessable as Ben’a body was never found and no murder was confirmed until 40 pages before the ending. There’s no sense of urgency from Jess, who is looking for her missing brother - she doesn’t seem to care at all so why should I? She rarely speaks about their childhood and her love for him to interest the reader in their relationship. It’s like she doesn’t really care much. The book is readable, it’s not that bad but it’s not that good as well. We need a book like Gone Girl again which continuously gave and gave and like the Silent Patient. Sorry but I enjoyed the Guest List better - this is dull and I kind of didn’t care about it about anything after the first 50 pages. And I knew that (person x) wasn’t dead from the start. No body was ever found.

Speed: Set in France, of course, where films that are "beautifully paced" [read: slow] are standard; well, OK, I have no problem with a slow moving story *if the writing is beautiful*, if the characters are engaging and well-drawn. But here, it's supposed to be a mystery so get on with it. The action and the reveal (such as it is) is far too delayed, the build-up disproportionately long.Writing: Stick a pin in the book anywhere and I defy you to guess who is talking based on style. Everyone talks the same. This was the case in "The Hunting Party" but at least there almost everyone was the same type of person anyway. In this book, everyone from the concierge to the supposedly well-polished millionaire's wife are indistinguishable. For example: we are repeatedly told how Jess has no money at all, not even a few euros in cash, and when she has to meet someone at an expensive café, she is anxious about the prices: DOES he pay the bill or not? It is never mentioned, and yet for someone like Jess it would be a huge point, she would absolutely talk about it. Which leads to the next point.The big plot hole: It is emphasised over and over how Jess (a) is painfully poor, and always has been (b) has never been abroad before, ever (c) that her decision to come from England to Paris was spontaneous and sudden and immediate. She takes the Eurostar London-Paris (with money she stole). HOW? *How did she get through passport control?* I think the author —and the dozen editors etc that she thanks in her acknowledgements— are all simply too middle-class to imagine themselves into Jess's world; it literally never occured to them that there are people who are too poor to have a passport. This plot hole is fatal: Jess could never have got to Paris at all. For heaven's sake, how hard would it be to at least have her steal one? Or set the whole thing in London: OK, so I suppose she wanted the peculiar architectural features of a Parisian house and she needed a concierge, but Paris is depicted in a very 2-dimensional way: a couple of people drinking pastis, two croissants, and everyone saying "putain" from time to time does not a satisfactory Parisian atmosphere make.There are also several smaller implausibilities. We have a millionaire's wife keeping someone alive by feeding them "scraps". Why? She could order a banquet. Also, why, throughout, is she so scared of how [Person X] will react to her behaviour, when she knows that person is dead? Why, if it was so important to keep Jess out of their fortress, did not the residents simply change the keycode? Does nobody ever feed the cat?And finally, the Big Secret that the baddies kill to preserve is no big deal: nobody in French high society would give a damn if it came out.Oh and full of typos.TLDR: Lazy writing, lazy editing, inexplicably popular.

As Jess turns up at her brothers Paris apartment she finds not all is as it seems, especially when he is nowhere to be found. As she tries to find him she becomes embroiled in a tangle of family secrets, lies and cover ups. Can she discover the truth before it’s too late?Skilfully written, a real page turner, and left me needing always ‘just one more chapter’ before putting it down. Lots of twists and turns throughout entire book not just the ending which kept it fast paced and engaging.Interesting character development - I have to be honest and say none of the characters i particularly liked or rooted for, but I still wanted to hear their stories which is unusual for me (if I don’t like most/main characters I sometimes find it hard to continue reading). Loved the structure of the book and how the chapters are each short inserts from the different characters so we get to hear from all sides concurrently about the same events. On occasion the book flips back in time but it’s easy to follow to time jumps and not get muddled. Read a few from the author and always enjoyed them and this one is no different. Definitely recommend, though with the warning to read when you have time to inhale as it’s a difficult one to put down!

When Jess arrives at a beautiful old apartment block in Paris to spend some time with her older half-brother Ben, only to find he has mysteriously disappeared, she knows instinctively that something is not right. Settling into his 3rd floor apartment, she tries to get a feel for the place and its other inhabitants, the snobbish socialite who has the pentfloor apartment, odd Mimi, drunken Antoine, Ben's old University friend Nick and the watchful concierge. The more she observes them all and discovers their secrets, the more she suspects one among them may know more than they are letting on about Ben's disappearance, and when she stumbles upon a story that Ben was investigating, the pieces of the jigsaw slowly begin to fit together. However, the closer she gets to finding out what happened to Ben, the more danger Jess finds herself in!I know that Foley's last novel, The Guest List, was quite popular, however, where I had found myself slightly disappointed in that book after all the hype, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed her latest offering. There are certainly similarities in her writing style in both books, with short, snappy chapters that help to build the tension and have you eagerly moving onto the next, as well as multiple points of view and a strong sense of atmosphere. As with The Guest List, I liked the gradual peeling back of the layers to the characters as their backstories are slowly revealed, such that you start to piece together how everything connects.Whilst I wouldn't say the characters in this book are necessarily likable, apart from Jess, I did find myself connecting to them much more than I did the characters in The Guest List, and I thought that Foley did a better job here of portraying most of them in a more rounded way, showing their vulnerabilities as well as their more dislikable traits and flaws. We are afforded flashbacks and see Ben through each of the resident's eyes and how they perceived him, and certainly it becomes clear why each might have motives for wanting him out of the picture. That being said, where I thought I had the mystery figured out, the ending did actually take me by surprise, unlike The Guest List, which I found more predictable.As a mystery novel, there is nothing out of the ordinary here, with Foley mostly sticking to tried and tested formulas, however, I personally thought it was a mystery well told and engaging throughout, even though the pace is on the slower side. The apartment itself feels very closed off from the streets of Paris around it, with an eeriness to it that creates the feel of a 'country manor mystery' but in a more contemporary setting. When Jess does venture out, Foley is able to capture the vibrancy of Paris, from its more exclusive parts, as well as that of a cosmopolitan city, and also hints of an uglier side with turbulence and violence.I think Foley also does a good job within the book of contrasting the lives of the exclusively wealthy with those less privileged, (even Ben and Jess have led quite disparate lives, due to his being adopted and she being raised in care), and there is quite a dark story told here of how the more vulnerable members of society may be preyed upon and taken advantage of, whilst those in high places wield their power.Overall, I found this an enjoyable and suspenseful read, and I likely will at some point go back to Foley's earlier mystery, The Hunting Party, which I have not yet read.