Paris, My Sweet

by Amy Thomas

[Leah]

Memoirs are probably the hardest thing to review – as Danielle has said previously, how can you review somebody’s life? How can you pick their book to pieces when you’re essentially picking them to pieces in the process? Hard, hard, hard. It’s really hard to successfully read and review a memoir, and it’s probably why I’ve never seen a website dedicated to reviewing them! Paris, My Sweet is half-memoir, half love of all things sweet and Amy Thomas’s story is definitely one that you usually see in a Chick Lit novel rather than real life as her dream of living in Paris – and touring around every. single. dessert. shop. – comes true at the age of 36 when she’s offered a job there, but true it is and for the most part, it’s enjoyable.

What I liked about Paris, My Sweet is that Amy Thomas is very much a passionate person. About New York, about Paris, about her sweets. And that comes across massively in the novel as she finally gets to live her dream of living in Paris and being like a real, proper French person. As she gets the chance to travel around Paris/France sampling some of the best bakeries and other places that sell anything remotely sweet and the novel really comes alive when she’s talking about the places she visits and the treats she tries. Believe me, if you read this book while hungry then you’re making a huge mistake. You need to read this book with a dozen different pastries to keep you going because Thomas’s descriptions are just mouth-watering. I like to think I like a good dessert, but not even I had heard of most of those desserts and pastries. I like a good chocolate cake or plain cookie or muffin, but in Paris you can get cake/cookies/muffins with nuts in, with peanut butter, with all sorts of different combinations. It’s really quite epic and if you’re wondering where the best patisseries/bakeries are in New York and Paris you’ll find them in this book.

What I wasn’t so big a fan of was Amy’s inner monologues. Without being rude about her, at times during the book she comes across as very patronising/pretentious. She moves to Paris, and then a while later she voyages back to New York and she spends that entire trip complaining about how New York is terrible, awful, nothing like Paris (with a rather memorable “When did everyone get so fat?” quote which considering she spends a massive amount of time eating pastries is a bit rich, no?) and she acts as though New York is below her and then she goes back to Paris and complains about how terrible Paris is! How it’s nothing like New York and how she’s miserable in Paris. On the one hand I can understand it – I’m an expat and I’m not a fan of it – and I can understand how being lonely can be miserable, but it’s so tiresome to hear her question whether she should stay in Paris or return to New York, stay in Paris, return to New York, stay in Paris, return to New York and it just got really irritating. Then to top it all off, she peppers French words throughout the book (“Oui, oui, I am a wonderful person” which isn’t an actual quote, but you get my meaning) and I’m really not a fan of that. At all. I get it, you’re in France, you’re learning/fluent in French… But it’s a bit unnecessary and, as I said, a bit pretentious.

Overall, it was a quick and enjoyable read. It did end a bit abruptly and I think it would have been better to have released this novel when she’d decided where to permanently base herself, especially since it’s a massive part of the novel. Instead, it ends without a real decision, and it just seemed rather rushed which was a shame. I still had about 12% left to read, but that was just the numerous addresses to all of the bakeries/patisseries that Amy mentioned/visited and it was just rather abrupt! I really liked it and I did think the dessert talk was brilliant, because like I said, Amy is very passionate about her sweets and desserts. But it falls down because it tries to be a mix of Amy’s job talk/life in Paris and Amy’s adventures in the land of sweets. For me, the job talk/life in Paris was alright, but I was more interested in the sweet side of things. I think anyone who loves Paris and loves desserts will eat this book up. I’m pleased I read it because it was a cute, quick read, and I do wonder if there’ll be a sequel to the novel, because there is scope there (after all, you can never have too many sweets!).