Sunday 1 November 2015

The Little Bookshop on the Seine (The Little Paris Collection Book 1) - Rebecca Raisin


La Vie En Rose
Bookshop owner Sarah Smith has been offered the opportunity to exchange bookshops with her new Parisian friend for 6 months! And saying yes is a no-brainer – after all, what kind of a romantic would turn down a trip to Paris…for Christmas?

Even if it does mean leaving the irresistible Ridge Warner behind, Sarah’s sure she’s in for the holiday of a lifetime – complete with all the books she can read!

Imagining days wandering around Shakespeare & Co, munching on croissants, sipping café au laits and watching the snow fall on the Champs-Élysées Sarah boards the plane.

But will her dream of a Parisian Happily-Ever-After come true? Or will Sarah realise that the dream of a Christmas fairytale in the city of love isn’t quite as rosy in reality…

A deliciously feel-good Christmas romance perfect for fans of Debbie Johnson and Julia Williams

What did I think?



There is just something so very magical about this book - it really made me feel like I could see, smell and experience Paris from the comfort of my living room.

Sarah is quite comfortable in her little bookshop in sleepy Ashford, USA.  She has her friends across the road in the Gingerbread Cafe (an earlier book of Rebecca Raisin's) and her boyfriend is on the road trying to make a career for himself as a reporter.  Then her friend Sophie in Paris has a bust up with her boyfriend and asks Sarah to swap bookshops.  This is where the fun begins!

Sarah isn't the most confident of ladies and I though she did brilliantly well to get to Paris on her own in the first place.  She barely speaks French and the trains are a nightmare but she finally makes it to Sophie's bookshop and it is heaving with people!  Sarah dives straight in and helps out, quickly realising that her idea of dreamily wandering around Paris was indeed a dream as she doesn't get a spare minute in Sophie's bookshop.

I loved Sarah's love of books.  Her flinching as a reader cracks a spine on a book (me too!) and calling them her book babies.  Sarah's knack of matching readers to books was a lovely idea and I could almost smell and feel the books, so much so that I wanted to hop on a plane to Paris to find this wonderful bookshop for myself!

There are some lovely little stories within this book - the famous author who visits the bookshop every day to write and to be near his unrequited love and the mystery of the money going missing from the till.  All will be revealed in the pages of this gorgeous book.

I felt that Sarah really gained confidence throughout the book although she gave her boyfriend one too many chances, in my opinion.  I really didn't trust Ridge throughout the book, I felt he was messing Sarah around and was living a single life while he was away. Spending one day with her in Paris was atrocious, he might as well have not bothered at all.  I'm sure Sarah and Ridge will appear in another book but I get the feeling that they are not meant for each other.  Perhaps I am wrong...my opinion did change slightly towards the end but my suspicions had already been raised and no satisfactory explanations were forthcoming!

There are such wonderful sparkling characters in this book that I couldn't help but smile as I read it.  I loved Sarah's visits to The Little Antique Shop Under the Eiffel Tower which left me eager to read the next Little Paris instalment but, in the meantime, I hopped over to Amazon to pick up Christmas at the Gingerbread Cafe.

This is my first Rebecca Raisin book and I loved it.  Her style of writing is almost dreamlike and sparkly which will bring a smile to everyone's face.

I received this e-book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My rating:





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