I Heart Paris

Angela is a bit hard to like sometimes.
The first book, I Heart New York, was fun.
She left her cheating fiancée and moved out of the country to NYC on the spur of the moment. She had a lot of good things fall into her lap, and it was fun to read.

This book, Angela's boyfriend invites her to go to Paris with him. He's also trying to get her to move in with him. She's trying to talk him out of the move and out of the trip.

But, as luck would have it, she gets offered a job that she can easily do while in Paris. She decides to go and almost immediately things start going wrong. She winds up in Paris with no luggage, and it's not just lost it is destroyed.
So, the trip starts on a bad note for her. But from there she needed to take more show more responsibility for causing a lot of the bad stuff. She fights with her boyfriend, her coworkers, her best friends...she gets drunk an awful lot and spends money she doesn't have.

I'm all for a fun read where we can just enjoy the lead character having some fun in her travels. But I kind of wanted to say to the main character "please eat something, drink less, stop maxing out your credit cards and stop picking fights with your boyfriend".

It's just not that glamorous of a read when the lead character spends so much time throwing up. show less

Novels stand out either because of their striking storyline or because of the enjoyable style of writing. Admittedly, it’s not a shock that an extraordinary story isn’t to be expected out of most chick-lit novels, but author Lindsey Kelk luckily excels in her fun writing style.

Following the list of adventures, I Heart Paris is the third instalment from the I Heart…series, which started with New York and Hollywood. The novel’s heroine Angela gets a huge writing assignment to write a guide to Paris just as her rock star boyfriend asks her to join him there too. Unfortunately, life quickly takes a dramatic turn of events.

Now, the storyline isn’t that great; the book is about precisely only three things: Angela’s boyfriend, show more Angela’s BlackBerry, and Angela’s Mac laptop, all of which she complains about all the time. However, the author’s writing style makes the musings of this one-dimensional and rather tedious character seem amusing and not in the least bit boring. Part of I Heart Paris’s appeal is that the main character’s personality develops noticeably in comparison to the previous novels: how she deals with familiar situations with a total different attitude is interesting.

What’s intriguing about I Heart Paris is the portrayal of Angela as a real person. A real live blog by the character actually exists online, as does her email account mentioned in the novel, and the guide to Paris that she worked on throughout the story is published at the end. It includes reviews and contacts of real top Parisian hotels, restaurants and shops as well. The author really knows how to make a story look rich and lifelike; and for a while, the reader almost forgets that this is a work of fiction and the product of a writer’s imagination.

However, a good story should remain in your memory after you’ve finished reading the book. This one doesn’t. I Heart Paris is more of a whimsical, relatable and pleasant passing story than it is neither an exceptional nor an unforgettable experience.

If you enjoyed the prior books of this series; you’ll like this one. If they didn’t make the best impression, give IHeartParis a chance; there’s a definite improvement to the character and the pace of the story in general. The romantic setting of Paris is well depicted and Kelk’s smart style makes this book a fun and light read.

by Salma Tantawi - Writer for http://www.Cairo360.com show less

I personally liked "I heart NY" better, as Angela's adventures in Paris in my opinion just were a bit too much of everything, just trouble after trouble, missunderstandings and too many drinks with consequences, not only daily, but hourly.