THE ATMOSPHERE – A creepy, old, but once elegant apartment building in Paris – what’s not to like? Once elegant but now showing it’s age with peeling wallpaper, no air conditioning, nothing really updated about these apartments. This is a hard skip it. Stuff does get explained at the end, but the ending isn’t particularly clever or interesting. Moreover, the book proceeds along so clunkily with little discernible plot for a vast majority of the book. For me, the “meh” ending definitely wasn’t worth the tedious and slow lead-up. Jess reaches out to Ben after not seeing him for many years. He is living in Paris and agrees to let Jess crash at his place until she finds a job and another place to live. With her signature style, Lucy Foley delivers a fast-paced, multi-layered Parisian Mystery here. The twists just keep on coming. My jaw was on the floor for half the book. no time to review yet, but i gotta say—and maybe this is just my patterson-overload talking—this one is leaps and bounds better than her first two agatha christie wannabes, which i enjoyed in an entertainment kind of way, even though they were basically the same book. this one is more ambitious, more surprising, more satisfying in every way, even though—trigger warning—she never feeds that cat ONCE, and it was giving me serious stress the whole time. FEED YOUR CATS, PEOPLE!

The Paris Apartment, however, offers up a completely different group of players-to go along with this foreboding atmosphere and I thought it was the BEST of her three to date! Yet, this shift also allows Foley to make the outside world of Paris itself feel as important to the story as the hidden staircases which turn up behind the titular apartment building’s walls, a city that’s beautifully charming and strangely threatening all at once. Widespread riots and police violence in the larger city adds an intriguing frisson of tension whenever Jess leaves the building, while her inability to speak even the most basic French makes her seem increasingly isolated in a world that already feels disposed to ignore her and her fears. i also like the hooky tagline—your typical breakfast-club round-up of character types, with a nice little endrhyme: The Paris Apartment is a thriller about a journalist who mysteriously disappeared while living in an odd apartment building in Paris. New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door, An Unwanted Guest is the acclaimed 2018 mystery-thriller from Shari Lapena. The book is set in a remote and romantic inn, the dream spot for a romantic weekend getaway.Well researched and compelling, the switch from past to present is done seamlessly giving the reader some light-hearted moments in between the more heart-wrenching and suspenseful ones. There are a couple of romantic scenes in the novel but they are not the main focus; rather they serve to add another dimension to the characters making me care deeply about each person's fate. There is no way to read the story without feeling a range of emotions, from surprise to fear to relief to grief and thankfully, also to joy. While the author is known for her historical romances, this is her first foray into historical fiction and in my opinion, it's a resounding success. I will say, I did appreciate it wasn’t some huge chase/fight at the end and that they actually kind of talked it over—Jess and Sophie. Sometimes these stories really go out there with the climax and it’s way too much. But in the end, not a lot really happened in this book and I do think it wasn’t a surprise Ben was still alive after all. Narrator: Clare Corbett, Daphne Kouma, Julia Winwood, Sope Dirisu, Sofia Zervudachi & Charlie Anson Anyway, Sophie sees what happened and covers up for Mimi. We had learned that Sophie had worked at the club and eventually married Jacques and tried to change her entire image. But he was a cruel and evil man and so she hated him and wasn’t too sad to see him gone. However, she did somewhat care for Ben, and decided to keep him alive but hidden.

A suspenseful ride looking at the hidden secrets and motivations behind a family, The Better Sister will undoubtedly conjure up similar feels to the Lucy Foley work. Shiver – Allie Reynolds I liked the creep atmosphere, slowly building tension, short and effective chapters, eccentric voices of multi POVs! Amateur filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with an old mining town known as ‘The Lost Village’ and its long history of disappearances. Obsessed with how her grandmother’s entire family also disappeared from the face of the Earth in 1959, Alice assembles a small film crew and attempts to film what happened in this creepy setting.

More in Books

Aside from the cast of suave, sexy and successful characters, The House Across the Lake is the perfect book for anyone looking for another book that captures the layers of revelations and twisted psychological twists that come with The Paris Apartment. The Better Sister – Alafair Burke Jess arrives in Paris at the apartment of her half-brother, Ben. However, Ben isn't answering any of her texts, is nowhere to be found, and there are some unsettling discoveries in the apartment. Will Jess be able to find out what happened to Ben? What went on in this apartment?

The two-paragraph version: Jess arrives to stay with her half-brother Ben at his apartment in Paris, but Ben is missing. She explores the building which has an extensive wine cellar and meets the various other residents of the building. Lucy Foley’s The Paris Apartment was one of the most popular books from 2022, with the British author once again proving why she is amongst the best in the business when it comes to thrillers. Ben is supposed to be there. She just heard from him. It's late at night, where could he have gone to and why wouldn't he tell her? A mystery-thriller set in a luxurious apartment complex housing sinister secrets and characters, it’s clear to see why so many consider one of the best books like The Paris Apartment. The Lost Village – Camilla Sten When Jess Hadley arrives in Paris to visit her half-brother Ben (and escape an uncomfortable personal situation of her own in London), she’s surprised that he’s is nowhere to be found and that none of the neighbors in his swanky new building are terribly concerned about what’s happened to him. Naturally, she’s determined to figure out what went down—Ben is many sometimes sketchy things but she doesn’t believe he would have bailed on her so completely—a quest that may end up putting her in more danger than she could have ever predicted.I don't quite understand the hype around this author. This is my second Lucy Foley novel and I tried very hard to stay with the story. As with her previous books, there is a huge cast of characters, and the chapters alternate between each of their perspectives. This is the story of Jess, who is heading from the UK to stay with her brother Ben in Paris. When she arrives at his apartment, he has disappeared, and the other residents either can't or won't share what they know about his whereabouts.

This promising premise devolves with the plethora of characters introduced and tangential plot lines muddy the cohesiveness of the story. The slow burn aspect of the thriller plods instead of simmers with tension. The plot twists seem transparent and I was aching for a resolution that failed to satisfy. I loved the riveting mystery about missing step brother Ben who vanished into thin air and the last place he’s seen his apartment. as someone who values what little sleep i can scrape together, the above is what is known as a ringing endorsement. And lastly, when the plot reveals finally start happening in the last quarter of the book, they weren’t interesting enough to be worth the tedious lead-up. There were two slight shortcomings for me: one is that there is no real sense of place in this book other than the apartment building. I could totally visualize it, but it could be set anywhere, Paris doesn't really factor into the story. Also, the timeline is quite jumpy, and there were a few times I would have to re-read certain sections because I thought I was in the present and then it turned out I was in the past, and vice versa. It didn't happen really often, but often enough that I noticed it.

Toys

When a woman inherits a Parisian apartment undisturbed since WWII, she discovers that it may hold the key to unraveling her cold and distant great-grandmother's secret life -- a past of sacrifice during a mission to protect those she loved.” The narrators are largely unlikeable and mostly unreliable. They all have secrets to hide, some darker than others, and some interconnected.