The Paris Apartment

The Paris Apartment, by Lucy Foley, was one of my most anticipated reads this year. I tried to get it on NetGalley, but just to be sure, I requested it from all three of my libraries. I already really wanted to read it, because The Hunting Party is one of my favorite suspense stories, and then when I saw everyone on my bookstagram was posting it, I just got more and more excited.

So, in the beginning of The Paris Apartment, Jess arrives in Paris to visit her half-brother Ben, but Ben has mysteriously disappeared a couple hours before she arrived. She really needs a place to crash, since this is less of a family visit and more of an escape, so Jess watches someone else enter to get the building code and then picks Ben’s apartment door lock to get in and have a place to sleep.  The building is full of creepy characters, who all know more about Ben’s disappearance than they’re letting on.

Look, I loved the upscale jerks with secrets in The Hunting Party, so I was excited to meet the upscale French jerks with secrets in The Paris Apartment.  I read this on my Kindle, and noticed I kept checking the percentage read. This is never a good sign — in a really absorbing book, readers aren’t usually checking to see how far along they are. About 70% of the book is just different POV characters in the building all referring to their unspoken dark secrets and how they won’t let Jess find out anything about Ben, mixed with scenes of Jess trying to investigate Ben’s disappearance. It takes ages for anything to really happen, and not in a good way.

It’s almost painful for me to say anything negative about The Paris Apartment because I loved The Hunting Party so much. It’s one of my usual recommendations when I’m asked about suspense, but this is my least favorite Foley book, by a lot. Only my trust in the author kept me from DNF, I kept thinking, yes, it’s very slow, but I’m sure there will be a big payoff at the end! But there wasn’t really a twist in this book– it doesn’t feel suspenseful for me when everyone who seemed kinda ominous was kinda ominous, and everyone who seemed like they were up to something shady was up to something shady.  Maybe I got too excited for this book, and it just couldn’t live up to how much I enjoyed The Hunting Party, but overall, this was a bit of a disappointment from one of my most anticipated releases this year.