Welcome to No.12 rue des Amants
A beautiful old apartment block, far from the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower and the bustling banks of the Seine. Where nothing goes unseen, and everyone has a story to unlock.
The watchful concierge
The scorned lover
The prying journalist
The naïve student
The unwanted guest
There was a murder here last night.
A mystery lies behind the door of apartment three.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley was published in hardback on 3 March 2022 by HarperCollins. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour
I have been reading Lucy Foley's books for around seven years now. I enjoyed her earlier historical novels and am a fan of her more recent thrillers.
The Paris Apartment is a mystery set in a grand apartment block in an exclusive district of Paris and features down-at-heel Jess who has recently been working in a bar in Brighton, but had to leave quickly. She's travelled from the UK over to Paris to visit her half-brother Ben. They share the same mother and were put into care as youngsters. Jess went from foster home to foster home whilst Ben was adopted by a wealthy couple and has had a life that Jess can only dream of.
When Jess arrives at Ben's apartment block, he doesn't respond to her texts. Despite the fact that he told her that he'd be there to let her in, he's disappeared. Using experience gained in life, Jess manages to get into his apartment, only to find a strange chemical smell, a cat with streaks of blood on its fur and Ben's St Christopher wedged between the floorboards.
Jess speaks to the other residents in the block, but the majority of them are really wary of her, and only one of them seems prepared to help .... but is he really helping?
Foley tells her story in short, snappy chapters, from the point of view of the various residents. We also hear from the mysterious and quite strange concierge; a woman who sees everything that happens in the apartments, but rarely speaks.
There is a lot of character building and scene setting in the first half of the book, the reader really gets to know each of the characters. Or, so we think! There's a big reveal at around half way through the book and after that, the pace really quickens. It also turns all of the preconceptions of the reader upside down.
This is a classic mystery story, set in a building that is as much a character as the people we read about. Jess uncovers things that someone would kill to hide, and maybe they already have?
An easy and fairly quick read for me, a story that kept me guessing to the end, with a couple of twists that totally took me by surprise.
with two and a half million copies sold worldwide.
Lucy’s thrillers have also hit the New York Times and the Irish Times bestseller lists, been shortlisted for the Crime & Thriller Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards, selected as one of The Times and Sunday Times Crime Books of the Year, and The Guest List was a Reese’s Book Club choice.
Lucy’s novels have been translated into multiple languages and her journalism has appeared in publications such as Sunday Times Style, Grazia, ES Magazine, Vogue US, Elle, Tatler, Marie Claire and more.
Say hello at www.facebook.com/LucyFoleyAuthor and follow Lucy on Twitter @LucyFoleyTweets and Instagram @LucyFoleyAuthor
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