The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley | Book Review

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley is a best-selling mystery novel by the author of The Guest List.

Jess, an English bartender who’s down on her luck, quits her abusive job goes to Paris. She needs to clear her head and plans to visit her brother, Ben. Only when she gets there, he is nowhere to be found.

Jess stays in his apartment while she searches for her missing brother. In the meantime, she gets to know his neighbors – they could be the answer to Ben’s disappearance.

My Rating for The Paris Apartment

Genre: Mystery, Thriller ; Length: 384 pages

I had really high hopes for The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley because I’ve heard good things about The Guest List. I haven’t read The Guest List yet, but after reading this book, I’m not sure if I’ll read another book by Lucy Foley.

Maybe her other books are great and this one was just a dud!? I give it 1 star.

Overall, the book started out suspenseful, but took way too long to build into something real.

Jess spends most of the book searching for her brother, meeting the neighbors, and having some seemingly unconnected experiences. She doesn’t get much closer to finding Ben.

Eventually, it seems like she’s just living in a fancy apartment in Paris, surrounded by strange neighbors, without her brother.

There were two big reveals in this mystery. The first one didn’t seem very significant the second one was the answer to the mystery. I kept reading to get to the final answer, but the answer didn’t feel weighty enough for the entire book to lead up to it.

Synopsis

Jess, an English bartender who’s down on her luck, quits her abusive job and needs to get out of town. She needs to clear her head – and what better reason to visit her half-brother, Ben, who conveniently lives in Paris.

Only, when she gets there, he is nowhere to be found. At first, Jess settles into his apartment and waits for him, expecting him to be home soon. After a day passes and he still doesn’t turn up, Jess starts to worry about missing brother.

While she’s digging into Ben’s disappearance, Jess gets to know his neighbors – they could lead her to her brother. As she gets to know them, she’s left with more questions than answers.

Between the aggressive alcoholic, the friendly guy, the high-strung older lady, the two roommate-sisters, and the concierge, Jess doesn’t know who to trust. Everyone seems suspicious – like they know something she doesn’t.

My take on The Paris Apartment

Spoiler Alert!!!

The Paris Apartment started out like any other mystery novel. A dark night, some shady characters, an unfamiliar environment. At first I was really engaged since the short, punchy chapters kept the suspense going.

My favorite part was the scene when Jess first gets into Ben’s apartment and realizes he’s not there. Sensing something is not right, she turns around to find the cat licking blood off of its own paws. And then the chapter ends. That left me wanting to know more!

However, after a few good opening chapters, the story started to stagnate. Jess slowly met more of the neighbors and the details started to reveal themselves.

With a few red herrings and sex scandals along the way, it took way too long to learn anything substantial in this mystery.

The first big reveal was that all of the neighbors knew each other (not that unusual for neighbors). Then we find out that they are in fact all members of a powerful and wealthy family in Paris.

Most of the book lead up to this reveal. I just felt like this was incredibly underwhelming for the amount of time that Jess spent investigating each of the neighbors.

Her uneasiness all amounted to the fact that her neighbors were related to each other? That didn’t get her any closer to finding Ben.

It also seems like the investigation for the missing brother just kind of fell to the wayside when Jess became obsessed with the family that owns the apartment building.

The final reveal was that the concierge was actually the patriarch of this wealthy family, Jacques Meunier. He had been running a human trafficking scheme for years while the rest of the family had been covering his tracks.

Again, it seemed really underwhelming and completely unrelated to Ben.

You later find out that Ben became a target because he, as a journalist, was investigating the corruption committed by the Meunier family. Jess pieced together the clues, and found Ben beaten and injured – but alive and captive in the apartment’s underground wine cellar.

Conclusion

Overall, a strong, suspenseful start devolved into a seemingly unconnected series of events that moved too slowly to later reveal an underwhelming ending.

If you’re interested in corruption and scandal, this may be a good mystery read for you. The way it opened, though, was more of a murder mystery, and I was disappointed when the plot deviated from that.

The premise reminded me of the Netflix show The Perfect Couple, which is based on the novel by Elin Hilderbrand. I loved the show – it delivered on corruption, scandal, and a murder mystery!

If you’re looking for more book reviews – the last mystery/thriller I read that I really liked was The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. For other book recommendations, see below.