I stumbled across The Little Paris Bookshop when I was looking online for books about books. This is a favourite genre of mine and it always makes me smile, so I wanted to find more books featuring this theme. Enter The Little Paris Bookshop.
The Little Paris Bookshop, Nina George
Themes: Adult, Romance, Books about Books, Contemporary
Reading Format: Paperback
4 STARS // 8 CAWPILE
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The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is a novel of beauty, adventure and passions. It is character-driven, but the atmosphere and setting are incredibly influential to how I as a reader felt whilst being emerged in this book. To label this a romance or a contemporary I feel doesn’t do justice to the feelings it gives and the passions folded into the pages. Because really this book is an exploration into passion, love, literature and relationships.
Nina George writes her characters in a way that they become the book. Monsieur Perdu runs a floating bookshop in Paris, his Literary Apothecary, where he helps people heal their souls in the books he gives them. In turn, it felt like this book was also doing some soul healing, spreading messages throughout about loving yourself and being comfortable in your own skin before you let anyone else in. But back to Perdu, this main character has flaws, he has passions and he had the drive to live. He owned this story, it was his journey we went on and others joined in along the way. I love how easy going Perdu is, it made this book an easy read.
The atmosphere painted in this story, the waters of Paris, the floating bookshop, the characters swathed in their own emotions. It really made me feel at ease, this is a very calm book. It isn’t packed with adventure in the sense of fight scenes, epic heroes or great discoveries. But more so that Perdu is on a discovery of his own that he needs to be able to rest and that is what compels this book forward. I didn’t find the plot boring, I found myself falling into it, I felt I was there with the characters.
The Little Paris Bookshop is the definition of a beautiful book to me. I look forward to finding other works like this.
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This sounds like a wonderful read and one I definitely need to check out. It sounds similar to Menna Van Praag’s books, especially The House at the End of Hope Street, though that is more about literary figures than books. B x
Interesting assessment. I found it more… frenetic than you did. He was so anxious to find her, it colored the whole story. Not that this was a bad thing, but it wasn’t a calm book for me.
Lovely review! I have a copy of this hanging around somewhere… I need to bump it up on my TBR! 🙂