l'Appart by David Lebovitz

Publisher: Crown
On Sale Date: November 7 2017 
Pages:368

L'Appart is the entertaining memoir of chef and writer David Lebovitz. Originally from San Francisco, David fell in love with Paris and his French husband, and decided to move to Paris. Then the search for an appartment starts, which turns out to be anything but easy. But finding the right appartment turns out to be to easy compared to what follows next. The appartment needs a renovation and after a short search, through a friend they find a contractor to do the job, Claude. Claude's stop word is ''Pas de probleme, Daveed!''. Little does David know that Claude is covering up all his renovation faults with this phrase. Two years of a lot of ''merde'' and an appartment that doesn't seem to get finished follows. This all goes with the well known infamous French bureacracy, which David vividly describes, along with the differences in the American system he is more familiar with.

The difference between the two are quite interesting to read, and apparently this is not quite known to everyone who likes Paris, and this book shows that it's not all beauty and romantic but also that Paris has a quite outdated system, that might need some renovating and updating too. The expensive renovation disasters in his  apartment last untill the end of the book, where he luckily meets a friend who has a friend who is a contractor. And this one is not like Claude, but know to point out all the terrible mistakes Claude has made, so in the end, everything falls a little more into place in David's new house.

Beside the retelling of his ups and down in his Paris apartment, David included some delicious mouthwatering recipes, like Tarte Tropezzienne which are the ending of each chapter, and he describes why he chose for this recipe.

Overall it is a very entertaining book that shows a different side then the Paris you usually see, and behind its beautiful facade it's system (and the buildings..) truly has some cracks that need repair and updating. Davids retelling was entertaining, but at some points it was repeating itself a little bit. But most of all it was fun to read!