The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene: Book Review

Claire Harris is a New York socialite, throwing extravagant parties and softening up her husband’s potential business partners for him. Her past comes back to haunt her one night and she flees to Paris on the eve on the German occupation to find an old lover. Their reunion doesn’t go well and she finds herself working in a florist shop and reluctantly assisting the French Resistance.

I’m not quite sure what to think. On the one hand, I did enjoy the book. I love almost any WWII novels and this is no exception. On the other hand, it was a bit too romance-y for me. It just couldn’t quite make up its mind what it wanted to be. I can overlook romance–who doesn’t love a good love story?–but when I’m suddenly hit with “Heat flooded her core,” my eyes start rolling in my head and I start turning pages faster. “Can we please just get through this already?” To be fair, there were only a couple of those scenes but that was a couple too many for me.

I can’t put my finger on any examples of this, but I’m also left with the feeling that it needed one more good proofreading before it was published. It’s not bad by any means, it could have just been a little more polished.

I knew that the love story was going to center around Claire and Grey from their first meeting, so I did buy it. In retrospect though, I wish that part had been more fleshed out. Well, not that kind of fleshed out, but just the slow, getting-to-know-you part of things. Claire hates him at first, they meet a few times and she starts to change her mind, and then we’re to the heated core. Quite a bit of time actually passed in between all these stages, so there was room for it to realistically unfold.

I’ve been all negative here and I didn’t intend to be. I didn’t care for Claire at first but she did grow on me. She grows a lot throughout the novel, she has a huge heart and a lot of courage once she decides to let them show, and she’s faced with some pretty impossible choices. In the end, she unflinchingly does what she has to for those she cares about.

Readers who like more straight-up romance than I do should enjoy this book. If you’re more on the fence, like me, it’s worth a try at least. You’ll know what you think within the first few chapters.

Read an excerpt.

Buy The Last Time I Saw Paris at

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