Hi everyone! Hope you all enjoyed my post last week - I know I enjoyed creating it a lot! Today I'm back with a book review again - though I'm thinking about maybe making random posts every now and then.
The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor
Genre(s): Historical, Young Adult, Romance
Free download (z-lib.org)
Blurb:
NOW:
When sixteen-year-old Alice inherits an apartment in Paris that has been locked for over seventy years, she is determined to discover why its existence was hidden from her family for so long. However, the more time she spends digging through the mysteries of the past, the more she realizes there are secrets in the present that her family is still refusing to talk about.
THEN:
Ever since the Nazis invaded France, Adalyn has been determined to do something. When she meets Lue, the dashing and enigmatic leader of a resistance group, Adalyn feels she finally has a chance to fight back...even if it means risking her safety, her reputation, and her relationships with the people she loves most.
Although separated by generations, Alice's and Adalyn's fates are entwined in ways both heart-breaking and hopeful.
I don't normally read historical fiction but I feel like this one really interested me. It's a great book to get someone into historical fiction and I enjoyed every second of it. I loved Adalyn's perspective the best, and I think Alice's perspective was a bit unnecessary as all she was doing was looking for clues, but then there was some unneeded stuff about her relationship and also her family issues. Another thing that I didn't really like was that because there was two perspectives, the reader sometimes knew what happened before Alice did, and then Alice's part felt boring.
Sorry if this seems like I'm saying a lot of negative things about this book, but I like to get the negative stuff out of the way and move on to the positive stuff. I really think this book should be a movie, and if it becomes one then I'm definitely watching it as soon as I persuade my dad to renew our Netflix subscription 😫
I'm giving this book three stars but that doesn't mean it's not a good book. For me, three stars is basically I really liked this book and I would read a sequel if there was one. I would also probably recommend this to some of my friends who like reading historical fiction - though at the moment, I don't think anyone in Milly Squad does read historical fiction which is sad because it can actually be a really good genre. There was just some elements I didn't particularly like.
The cover looks so aesthetically pleasing as well, and I know you're not meant to judge a book by it's cover 🙄 but whenever I see an eye catching cover, I immediately pick up that book. That's a tip for whoever wants to become a writer: covers are important! Make them look interesting.
Adalyn's perspective was soo interesting, honestly sometimes I felt like I wanted a lot more of her perspective. I wanted to see how her family would react and it was really sad at the end when she died because for me she was more of a main protagonist than Alice.
Adalyn's character had a lot of depth and suspense and I think (I know I keep repeating myself) that she should have deserved a life. The ending disappointed me a bit because it was mainly Alice and Paul.
Alice was a pretty good character but really the only important role in the book was her trying to solve the mystery of Adalyn. Her relationship with Paul and the problems with her mum felt like add-ons and as if the author had nothing else to develop Alice's character with.
The perspective change was really smooth and didn't feel too abrupt, the only thing Jordyn Taylor should have improved when she was writing the perspectives would be to make sure that we don't find out about Adalyn before Alice did. I get that sometimes it's on purpose but here it kind of messed up the plotline.
Overall I'm giving this a three star rating as it could have been improved, but it was still an engaging book nonetheless.
Just to let you guys know there is a change of schedule and I will now be posting every Monday and Thursday :). Hope you have a good day/night and stay safe. Like, share, comment and don't forget to sign up! You can also check out my other website. Bye!
Noice!