‘Paris, passion and a penguin called Pepe. 5 festive stars!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nicola May, bestselling author of The Cornershop in Cockleberry Bay
‘Romance sweeter than a cupful of hot chocolate and marshmallows!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Debbie Viggiano, author of What Holly’s Husband Did
‘Brilliantly funny, heartfelt and impossibly festive’ Portia MacIntosh, author of The Great Ex-scape
United in grief. Pushed apart … Ex-scape
United in grief. Pushed apart by tragedy.
Keeley Andrews knows more than anyone that you only live once. So when she receives an invitation to spend two weeks in Paris, all expenses paid, she jumps at the chance.
Ethan Bouchard has had the worst eighteen months of his life. He’s ready to give up on everything, including his hotel chain. So when he meets Keeley, it simply isn’t the right time.
As Keeley and Ethan continue to bump into each other on the romantic Parisian streets, they can’t help but wonder whether this is fate telling them to let go of the past and leap into the future…
Head to Paris this Christmas and fall in love under the lights of the Eiffel Tower with best-selling author, Mandy Baggot.
Praise for A Perfect Paris Christmas:
‘This is a perfect story set in Paris at Christmastime that can be read year-round!’ NetGalley Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘A sparkling five-star read’ NetGalley Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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I am really beginning to love a Mandy Baggot novel! However, what’s not to love? This isn’t a light read, dealing with such serious subjects as transplants, but it’s a much better read for this. My first Christmas book of the season, everything else has a lot to live up to!
My thanks to Netgalley and Aria for the reading copy.
Favorite Quotes:
Your mum hasn’t ever really done “OK”… She generally ranges from “pallbearer” to “Elton John in his heyday” and nothing in between.
The church came in today. They all looked at me like they were sizing me up for my coffin.
… he had other more important things to do. Right now he needed to… drink coffee and… smell other people’s cigarettes and dream about smoking them himself and… eat more sweets. He was a very busy man.
You are still under the tourist illusion that everything in Paris is fragranced like it was manufactured in a perfumery… We learn to live with the scent of pee. No one knows where it comes from. We clean. We sanitise. After that, no one wants to know where it still comes from.
My Review:
This was a fun and cleverly amusing story with an original premise and enticingly quirky and complex characters. The lively storylines were well-paced, engaging, highly textured, and hit all the feels while alternating between squeezing and warming my heart. Ms. Baggot’s deft storytelling flows smoothly with colorful details that fleshed out each scene and kept me closely implanted within the characters’ periphery. I got to enjoy Paris without the jetlag, long lines, olfactory assault, or calories.
This was a new to me author and I couldn’t wait to read this book. It was fast-paced and full of emotions. I loved the storyline, and the characters were so easy to connect with. Their grief at losing their loved ones so tragically touched my heart. It was like being on an emotional rollercoaster and I was so happy to see them help each other slowly heal and start to live again. It seemed like fate had a hand in placing them in the paths of each other.
Mandy’s characters are always so realistic they practically jump off the page, and Keeley and Ethan are no exception. United yet separated by tragedy, their relationship seemed doomed from the start. Set in festive, gorgeous Paris, Mandy wove serious issues such as transplants and homelessness into the story without making them THE story. A lovely thought-provoking but heartwarming and engaging read.
*sniffs*
*mutters* Bleeping hormones… they’ve got a lot to answer for, I’ll tell you. Or maybe I can just blame the author – what do you think?
*shakes head*
Nah *nods*, that’s very true. *taps chin* I am a sap. Although in my defence, Keeley and Ethan’s story is so beautiful and heartfelt that I couldn’t help but shed a tear or two. *shrugs* Okay, okay, okay – I sobbed. Happy now?
Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.
Pfft *crosses arms*, I’d like to see the state of you once you’ve finished. Then we can talk!
I’ll deny this till I’m blue in the face, but I’m a sucker for festive feel-good reads. However, APPC was waaay more than that. This book was a surprise and a delight.
Keeley and Ethan’s story dealt with some very sensitive and emotive subjects (and does so sympathetically). Yet, the author manages to do what at first seems impossible. She manages to strike the perfect balance between knowing when to ramp up the emotion then breaking the tension with a burst of levity.
I had several snort-giggle moments. They are the best kind, aren’t they? When the laughter just bursts free because it can no longer be contained.
Keeley is brave and strong. She just needs a gentle nudge to help her find her feet again and embrace the future – whatever it brings.
Plus, let’s face it, resistance is futile against a smexy Frenchman! Especially when he doesn’t give his heart freely. Le sigh, it just makes it all the more sweeter.
With well-meaning (but meddling) families, a carefree bestie, questionable cosmetics, a penguin (yup, you read that right!) and a surprise addition or two, all set against the backdrop of the City of Love (and, let’s not forget, the most wonderful time of the year!), I dare you not to love all things APPC.
My first Christmas-themed read of 2020 and Mandy Baggot has set a really high bar for those that follow this festive season!
Soooo…
Is it too early to break out the Christmas decorations then?
*ducks*
I’m only kidding! *giggles*.
For me, ‘A Perfect Paris Christmas‘ was one of those books that I enjoyed… and took a few minutes after finishing to simply absorb the messages within those pages. We really don’t have any idea of what tomorrow holds, so we should be enjoying today a whole lot more than most of us do.
I believe there is a lot in ‘A Perfect Paris Christmas‘ that you should discover as you read it. I know there will be reviews with far more details but this one feels, to me, as a romance where the reader should be caught off-guard a bit as information is revealed. So, having said that, most of what you’ll want to know beforehand can be found in the Cover Description. What that won’t tell you is that your heart will break for both Keeley and Ethan yet by the ending it will be healed once again with hope for their future.
There were some slow portions where I simply wanted to hurry up and know more – but that’s my opinion, yours might be quite different. In all, throughout Ethan and Keeley’s romance, I laughed out loud, was in awe of the beautiful descriptions of Paris at Christmastime, cried at what had happened in so many lives, and completely enjoyed my time in this world. If you love a romance where you will (without a doubt) become emotionally involved in the hero’s and heroine’s lives, enjoy a bit of travel mixed in with your love stories, or simply love a really good love story set at Christmas – then you’re sure to enjoy ‘A Perfect Paris Christmas‘.
*I received an e-ARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley. That does not change what I think of this story. It is my choice to leave a review giving my personal opinion about this book.*
A Christmas romance with a hint of Return to Me
A Perfect Paris Christmas by Mandy Baggot is an emotional romance about a kidney transplanted woman who finds love and friendship when she travels to Paris to meet her donor’s family.
Keely was going through life the best way she could after losing her sister and her kidney to a terrible car accident.
A year after and she was still learning to cope with the restrictions of life post organ transplantation. She felt so blessed to have been spared, but, at the same time, she felt suffocated by her well-meaning mom and friends.
When she received an e-mail from her kidney’s donor mom inviting her to meet her in Paris, Keely was excited to leave England for a while but apprehensive of how things would play out.
The story is very emotional. Both families were dealing with excruciating grief. It was touching to see how Keely chose to see all her trials as blesses. I loved that she volunteered in a hospice and decided to make her second chance in life count.
The love story is sweet. There is a hint of Return to Me. If you don’t remember, or have not watched it, Return to Me is a Movie with David Duchovny and Minnie Driver in which she is the recipient of his deceased wife’s heart.
The plot is different, but the dilemmas are similar. One person had to die for the other to live. It is clearly not the recipient’s fault that the donor died, but it is challenging for those close to the donor to see things clearly.
There are some lovely side characters, including a care-free co-worker, a friend on palliative care, a resourceful orphan, and her beloved dog.
I loved that the story is set in Paris, and there is plenty of sight-seeing around the City of Light.
A Perfect Paris Christmas is an emotional and inspiring Christmas read with a happy and fulfilling end.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
*For more reviews, book art, and book-related articles, please visit https://lureviewsbooks.com *
Tragedy, comedy and romance, set in a beautiful city
After a sad introduction to the main characters through a fight over crumpets(!) in Keeley’s family home in London and Ethan’s uninspired leadership over Christmas planning for his chain of Paris hotels this book really took off and became all I love and hope for in a good romance.
Both main characters are dealing with grief, yet their happy, sometimes zany times together make the sadness of their individual losses bittersweet and don’t allow it to overwhelm their present. Young street urchin Jeanne and her flealess companion pooch BoBo add plenty of whimsy and heart to the story. Erika, the hospice patient, and her conversations with Keeley really moved me. The romance is sweet, the obstacles are realistic, and the sights, scents and tastes of a December, snow-dusted Christmas in Paris provided a perfect backdrop for Keeley and Ethan’s story. A Perfect Paris Christmas is ultimately a heartwarming romance with a positive message and a lovely ending.
I also really liked the happy medium author Mandy Baggot struck in acknowledging the pandemic in her 2020-set story but not fixating on it.
This was the first of Mandy Baggot’s novels that I’ve read and I was really impressed with the depth of emotion and complexity of the main characters, totally not the easy, breezy romance I had expected. This was so much better!
Thanks to publisher Aria and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.
A Perfect Paris Christmas by Mandy Baggot a sparkling five-star read. I am going to keep this short and sweet, as the words in this story are so strong, they stand for themselves and I don’t want to reveal any of the amazing story lines in this story. This has a depth that you don’t often get in this genre, but you do get with this author. Keeley faces a journey that I don’t think I would be strong enough to face, but she does it with compassion and poise. If you want something with romance and passion and a heart and depth that will astound you then pick this up.
here is a lot to unpack in this Christmas romance by Mandy Baggot. With many subplots involved, it takes a lot of concentration to keep them all straight as they are unveiled in the beginning. This is a SUPER slow-burn romance and I struggled with how long it took for the hero and heroine to meet. If you’re looking for a straight Christmas romance, that’s not what you’ll find here. What you’ll find here is a well-written women’s fiction/romance that is deeply plotted out, and has the couple exploring not just their own relationship, but all of the relationships in their lives.
As a living kidney donor myself, and the SIL of a transplant recipient, I appreciated that Mandy got the details of this storyline accurate every time. So often that is not the case, and when I got to the first mention of it, I sighed, expecting the majority of it to be wrong. I was PLEASANTLY surprised when it wasn’t. It was easy to see where this was going and why she was going to end up in Paris, but I still enjoyed the journey that Keeley and Rach took to get there.
The hero of the story was definitely troubled/tortured and he needed all the people in his life to help him come back from the loss of his best friend a year ago. He was learning to live again and wanted to make Ferne’s memory live forever in the hotels she left behind. To do that, he needed to make changes, changes that he wasn’t sure his partners wanted him to make.
When the meet-cute finally happened, it was definitely CUTE! Once the couple met, they danced around each other in a way that Mandy is known for, but you know the whole time that they are learning about each other, yearning for each other, and looking for that magical moment that will tie them together forever.
There are so many subplots here that it is difficult to review and talk about them all. The secondary cast of characters was extensive, but they all had a purpose. Erica was an excellent reminder to us all that we need to live NOW, not tomorrow. Jeanne was a reminder that kids are far more intuitive than we give them credit for. Bo-Bo, well, that heckin’ good boi was just great comedy relief. Rach was a delightful breath of fresh air who kept Keeley grounded when she was ready to fly off in a spiral of uncertainty.
If you love Christmas, romance, and a heavy dose of women’s fiction to keep the story humming along, you don’t want to miss this Christmas romance by Mandy Baggot. A Perfect Paris Christmas was just that, a picture-perfect, well-written romance to keep you company through a long winter’s night.