I am back with another book review! Today it is One Paris Summer by Denise Grover Swank. Thanks so much to BookLook Bloggers and Blink for sending me an finished copy of this book for review. As always, all opinions are my own.
I've been the mood for some fluffier, romantic contemporaries lately, I think it's with the summer weather I've been having here. Anyway, this book fit that bill quite nicely.
Basically, Sophie and her brother Eric are forced to fly from their home in Charleston to Paris, France to attend their father's second wedding, to Eva, a woman neither of them has met and he's only known for less than a year, and live there with their new step-sister, Camille who is pretty much the definition of evil step-sister, for a whole summer.
Of course, along the way, Sophie meets a cute French boy, Mathieu, and is juggling his mixed signals while also using the trip as her opportunity to tell Dane, her brother's friend from home who is visiting them for a few weeks, that she has feelings for him. Don't worry, things don't really stay love triangle-y for very long, Sophie makes her decision fairly quickly after some revelations about one of the boys comes to light.
As someone who has been in Sophie's shoes, I really felt for her and Eric. Their dad walked out on them, didn't even tell them he was leaving the country, pretty much for good, until the day he left for the airport. Our situations do differ slightly though, and I am glad that Sophie and Eric are able to come to terms with everything that is changing in their lives.
In terms of the romance, it was very slow building. It turns out that the cute French boy is one of Camille's ex-boyfriends and she's told all her friends not to be nice to her step-siblings. Obviously, there's some conflict and friction there, but things work out.
Everything builds to the end of summer, and while there is a few chapters after they leave, I was heartbroken for Sophie. I won't say too much but this is a love story, so obviously something has to turn out right.
I think overall, I really enjoyed this story. There was lots of deeper issues mixed in throughout the fluffiness, and I think that balance is important so the story isn't too meaningless, but not too depressing either.
I didn't quite give it 5 stars, because I found a few minor issues, the piano practice and Jenna issue working out a little to conveniently, Sophie ended up going where she wanted to even after everything, just little things that lined up a little too perfectly for my tastes.
A cute fluffy romance, with lots of Parisian charm and a little bit of drama!