Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Review: The Little Paris Bookshop

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is a different kind of love story.  The main character, Jean Perdu, is a middle aged man that owns a bookstore, which also happens to be a barge.  The name of his bookstore is Literary Apothecary and has been moored on the Seine for decades.  Perdu considers books to be medicine for the soul, and prides himself in being able to read people so well that he can prescribe the exact book that will help heal their soul.  The problem is, his own soul is broken.  A love affair that happened twenty years prior still haunts him, and he decides to go chase his past hoping for closure.  On his way, he picks up stray people, all struggling with their own issues of love.  Max, who has never truly known love, Cuneo, whose idealized love had crashed and burned, and Samantha, who was letting her life go by waiting for love to just show up.  As they travel together, they all learn a lot about themselves, each other, and love.

I truly enjoyed the premise of this book.  I love the idea that a bookseller can talk to a person a little bit and tell them exactly what book would be perfect for them right then, what can help them heal and grow.  I loved the passion that Perdu had for books. I like the characters, and how George really dug deep with all of them.  They were definitely all a little quirky, but isn't everyone, in their own ways? I really enjoyed the growth that all the characters went through, and feel that it was realistically done.  The book is a bit slow moving, and I did skim through some chapters that just seemed a little unnecessary.  There were a couple of passages that were a little on the risque side of things, but it is a book about love and Parisians, so passion is rather expected.  Overall, I really liked the book, but I am not sure that I would pick it up to read again.  I would recommend it to other lovers of literature, because the idea of a Literary Apothecary would be most understood by them.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

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