ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Last Chance in Paris by Lynda Marron #BlogTour
It’s my stop on the blog tour for Last Chance in Paris by Lynda Marron which is published by Eriu in paperback, eBook and audiobook. My thanks to the publishers for the review copy and to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the place on the tour.
When her husband suggests a romantic break, Claire feels obliged to say yes but immediately regrets it. After the tragedy they’ve been through, how can one weekend in Paris save their marriage?
Claire and Ronan aren’t the only people on a make-or-break visit to the City of Love. There is a big-shot movie producer from Hollywood, full of regret for a life ill-lived; a student from Boston, torn between love and duty; a Ukrainian refugee struggling to protect her little sister; and an old woman from Dijon, hoping to be braver than she has ever had to be before.
When their lives briefly intertwine, something extraordinary happens…
Last Chance in Paris is primarily the story of Claire and Ronan, an Irish couple on a weekend away in Paris. Ronan intends it to be a romantic gesture but also a way of bringing them together after the terrible event that has recently occurred in their lives. As they navigate their way around the city of love, they come into fleeting contact with a number of other people who are also having, perhaps, their Last Chance in Paris.
The idea of individual but linked strands really appealed to me about this book. I liked witnessing the different threads being pulled together, and it illustrated how fate can lead us into the path of someone who might touch us only briefly but leave a lasting effect. I enjoyed Claire and Ronan’s experiences of Paris, the tiny studio apartment they rent and their view of the landmarks, and also following the other characters, an American film director, an elderly lady from Dijon, two young Ukrainian girls, a student who works at Shakespeare & Co.
It’s a heartwarming novel which made me smile. It’s a sensitive and poignant story of love, loss and keeping on going, and it’s full of hopefulness and redemption. I feel like I’ve been on my own weekend in Paris as this book thoroughly transported me there.
Lynda Marron was born in Dublin and spent her early childhood in a small town called Prosperous in Co. Kildare. At the age of nine she moved to Cork. She has not yet mastered the language.
In her teens, she learned that reading curbed her anxiety, and that writing swept it clean away. Thus began her addiction to ink.
Lynda graduated from University College Cork in the mid-nineties with two degrees in microbiology, neither of which brought her any closer to her dream of writing a novel. She opted for the longer route, the Life Experience Creative Writing Course, which included teaching English to Italian teenagers, filing letters in a GP’s surgery, writing listicles for an online bookseller, and a twenty-five year module called Read All the Books.
She has made and raised four lovely humans, each of whom she taught to read.
When she isn’t busy writing her second novel, you’ll find her reading, not weeding, in her rewilded garden. Her greatest ambition is to one day plant a forest, or even just an oak.
Last Chance in Paris is her debut novel.
