I give this read 4/5 trips to the Eiffel Tower.
Thank you to Denise Grover Swank for writing this lovely book and again to NetGalley and Blink Publishing for giving me the opportunity to read it.
First of let me start with: Happy Publishing Day to "One Paris Summer"! I was fortunate enough to receive the digital ARC copy from NetGalley and Blink Publishing to read and I'm very excited about this one going out into the world today!
"One Paris Summer" starts off with Sophie and her brother Eric flying off to Paris to spend the summer with their father who left them in exchange for work in Paris and now his new wife and stepdaughter. Sophie is not happy at all to have to give up her summer home in the Carolina's to play nice with her father's new family even if it is Paris. As a person who dreams and dreams of going to Paris, at first I was thinking there's no way you (Sophie) could not be at least a little excited? But of course with the terms in which she was going I could see the trip as being very upsetting. All that starts to slowly change after she meets Mathieu outside a cafe where she had been sitting outside crying. The development of their to-be relationship is slow going but artfully done. I admit I was a bit frustrated with Sophie as a character because she did come off as a big baby, but throughout the rest of the book she grew on me and I feel like she could be a really good friend. Her love and passion of music and the piano reminded me of Mia from "If I Stay" by Gayle Forman's passion for her cello, and I think that made me want to give Sophie's character a chance (and now that I think of it, I bet they would be really great friends!).
Through the ups and downs of Sophie's story from the beginning to run ins with her new stepsister, her best friend's upsetting accident, to the inappropiatness of her brother's (I'm sure no longer) 'friend', there is a lot of story, character self-discovery, and love. For fans of "Anna and the French Kiss" by Stephanie Perkins, I would certainly recommend this one! The story was a great read for the summer time romantic in us all.
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Synopsis:
Most teens dream of visiting the City of Lights, but it feels more like a nightmare for Sophie Brooks. She and her brother are sent to Paris to spend the summer with their father, who left home a year ago without any explanation. As if his sudden abandonment weren't betrayal enough, he's about to remarry, and they’re expected to play nice with his soon-to-be wife and stepdaughter. The stepdaughter, Camille, agrees to show them around the city, but she makes it clear that she will do everything in her power to make Sophie miserable. Sophie could deal with all the pain and humiliation if only she could practice piano. Her dream is to become a pianist, and she was supposed to spend the summer preparing for a scholarship competition. Even though her father moved to Paris to pursue his own dream, he clearly doesn't support hers. His promise to provide her with a piano goes unfulfilled. Still, no one is immune to Paris’s charm. After a few encounters with a gorgeous French boy, Sophie finds herself warming to the city, particularly when she discovers that he can help her practice piano. There’s just one hitch—he’s a friend of Camille’s, and Camille hates Sophie. While the summer Sophie dreaded promises to become best summer of her life, one person could ruin it all.