Determined to escape her old life, Hallie packs up her life in England and heads to Paris. She falls in with the eclectic expat community as a bartender at the notorious Millie’s, located next to the Moulin Rouge. Here she meets Gabriela, a bartender who guides her through this strange nocturnal world, and begins to find a new family. But Millie’s is not all that it seems: a bird warns Hallie to get her feathers in order, a mysterious woman shows up claiming to be a chronometrist, and Gabriela is inexplicably unable to leave Paris. Then Hallie discovers a time portal located in the keg room. Over the next nine months, irate customers will be the least of her concerns, as she navigates time-faring through the city’s turbulent past and future, falling in love, and coming to terms with her own precarious sense of self.
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Paris Adrift
E.J. Swift
At first Paris Adrift is extremely difficult to understand. We are thrown straight into the time travel element as Leon is sent back in time to fix the timeline so there’s no war. There’s a lot of terminology which I eventually got my head around, but it was quite disorientating as you’re trying to figure everything out. For example time portals are called anomalies.
This books feels like a Parisian romance novel, and then a time travel plot has been shoe horned into it to make it a more marketable book. I personally felt that if the romance was removed or it was a purely platonic relationship, this book would have read a lot better. The romance aspects often slowed the pace right down as we’re shown Hallie being a girlfriend rather than working out what’s happening with the time portal. The actual time travel to the past wasn’t that interesting either. In 2017, it could have been a great coming of age style read as Hallie navigates Paris. But then she goes back in time and it falls apart. The problem with time travel as well is that at one point this book just mentions that Hallie goes to all these different times, and meets the same friend over and over again but we don’t actually see this. I’m at a loss as to why the author would spend time in a time travel book adding a unnecessary romance when she could be time travelling.
The places around France are ‘name-dropped’ a lot, which may be helpful for world building if you’re in Paris, but for someone who’s has limited knowledge, that world building needs to be done through the books text. I also thought that the characters took on the very stereotypical french smoker persona, which I found frustrating. It makes me wonder whether the author has extensive knowledge or limited stereotypical knowledge of the city. The characters do seem to be one dimensional, so it could just be poor character writing as to why this stereotype is used.
By 70% into the book, I was really hoping it would just end. I was bored, I’m the kind of reader who will just finish a book because I’ve already spent X amount of time on it. Luckily it did pick up in the last 10% but by this point, people who DNF would have dropped it and it just showed the promise that this book had. This then highlighted even more how dull the rest of the book was. As beautiful as the cover is, and I’m sure so many people will cover buy this – it just wasn’t as good as it could have been, which left me feeling disappointed.
POSITIVES
+ Picks up in the last 10%
NEGATIVES
– Stereotypes
– Romance wasn’t needed
– One dimensional characters
I received Paris Adrift by E.J. Swift from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review