All The Flowers in Paris by Sarah Jio

Publisher: Ballantine Books 
Publication date: August 13th 2019
Pages: 240
(This reviews contains spoilers/parts of the plot)

Paris, present time; Caroline has just left a Parisian café in anger. Angry because she found her ex husband there. Still angry she sets off on her bike to home. Not knowing that a few moments later she has choose to go left or right. Left where a mother and daughter are walking on the sidewalk, right where a truck is coming her way. No matter what she chooses, there is going to be a crash.
When she wakes up in the hospital, she doesn't remember anymore who she is or anything about her past. Her past that, as the reader learns later on in the story, make her leave her home in San Diego after a tragic accident where she lost her daughter, and the divorce of her husband. During the story, she spends a lot of time in the bistro Jeanty down the street where she meets the waiter Victor, which turns out into a romance and she tries to find her memory back, and learns more about the posh Paris apartment on the Rue Cler she lives in, and what happened there during the war. Her romance with Victor..there is something about him, and Caroline can't put her finger on it, but is she in danger, or is Victor the key to her lost past?

Back in the 1940's in Nazi-occupied Paris, Céline runs a typical Paris flower shop with her father. She has a young daughter, Cosi. When their half Jewish ancestry is found out, life takes a turn for the worst for them. It all starts when a German officer walks in to the store when Céline's father is alone, and he is attacked, then the officer comes back with something more threatening; he shows interest in Céline and blacmails her to become his mistress for the sake of the safety of her family. the love of her life Luc, the son of the owner of Bistro Jeanty is send to the south of France by the army. Then the windows are tainted with a big yellow star, making them lose all their customers. When she goes to bistro Jeanty to asks Luc's mother is she has a job in the bistro for her, she overhears Madame Jeanty talking to the German officer about Celine and her family and that they are planning to arrest them in the next days. Their try to escape fails a few days later, when Celine is separated from Cosi and her father during a raid in rue Cler and while Cosi and her father are loaded into a leaving Nazi truck, Céline is taken as a prisoner by the German officer in his apartment,  and she has to undergo a lot of physical torture. But not before she has found out Cosi escaped the hands of the Germans and is standing in front her in the hall of the apartment, and which she now has to try to hide as long as possible in her room for the German officer finds out..but how do you hide a young child in a small room in silence, when she also is now expecting a baby against her will? Celine has to make difficult choices to protect herself and the one she loves most, will the war be over in time to save her and Cosi?

This book just completely blew me away. I have read the previous books by Sarah Jio, and they all are very good, but this one totally stood out.I really like the switching between the main character, and she just switched to the other one that the story of the other became quite thrilling or made you wonder how this would continue, which really keeps you on the edge of you chair as a reader and made it a page turner. Especially Céline's story was beautiful, moving, entertaing but so heartbreaking and even horrifying in the end. Caroline's story was also entertaining, but I would have liked it even more if there was an even stronger link between her and Céline in the end, like some kind of lost family link or something. This was was also good, and all the dots where connected, but it wasn't the most interesting groundbreaking link between her and Céline. What did connect for her was her own past, which was quite an unbelievable link between her and Victor. I totally didn't see that one coming! And the author did a great job to to highlight the third main character in the book; Paris. You really, especially if you've been there yourself, see Paris coming to life in this book, and everything in it is just totally correctly true Paris.

Without giving away too much more spoilers than I already did, I can ony say more that All The Flowers in Paris is one of the best books of this year, truly recommend to put this one on your reading list, or to treat yourself on a copy of it and just read it right away!!