Last Chance in Paris by Lynda Marron

Publisher: Eriu

On Sale Date: January 30 2025

Pages: 288

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

Last Chance in Paris is a novel with a cast of different main characters in which the chapters alternate. 

Claire and Ronan are on a romantic weekend break from Ireland to Paris. A weekend that should save their troubled marriage. During the story and time in Paris, the reader gets to know more about their background and why their marriage is in trouble. Yeva is a teenager from war torn Ukraine, who fleds to Paris. She has to care for her younger sister who fled with her, and she doesn't have a job, so she is in a survival mode to find money and food for them both, while she truly misser her papa back in Ukraine.

Mireille Delasus is a woman in her seventies from Dijon, and whose husband Rémy passed away some time ago. We meet Mireille when he is about to travel to Paris by train. What she is about to go to Paris for remains a bit unclear though during the story, and it seems that she is lost a bit in life and in memory.

Dan is an American law student who is temporarily living in Paris on his study break. Harry is a famous Hollywood producer who has come to Paris to overthink his life, which was quite tumultous.

At firsthand, I thought that all the characters had seperate storylines, who would later on in the story cross paths in Paris someway. This does happen at some very tiny moments in the story, but further on, the characters stay in their own storyline and do not meet or get a connection to each other. This made the story feel very thin and somewhat odd, because all the storylines in itself are also very thin and one dimensional too. The whole point of this story? I wouldn't know, and I wonder if the author had a certain point to work towards too which was hard to find in this story. From al the different characters, Claire and Ronan where the most believable and realistic characters who had the most depth. Harry..I truly didn't understood his character, and his story added nothing to the book, which also counts for Dan who has the smallest and thinnest character and storyline in the book. These where two chatacters you wouldn't miss if they where left out of the story. The story of Mireille and Yeva where sad, but they where characters that had also very small storylines with a lot of loose ends and no real conclusion. They where all characters you don't start to care about as a reader.

This is a book I truly expected more from and which I not particularl recommend.