A Paris Apartment

A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable, 378 pages

Julie has already offered a great review of this book here, so I won't go into details too much. Suffice it to say that this book offers two sometimes-parallel stories of women in Paris: one a modern-day American furniture expert for Sotheby's, the other a 19th-century Parisian courtesan whose belongings (and journals) are the subject of the first's studies. While this book could be summed up as a mix between historical fiction and chick lit, it's also a fascinating read, particularly when you consider that the Parisian courtesan was a real person. This was a hard book to put down, and while I'm still waffling on how I feel about the ending, it was certainly enjoyable. I've never been much of a francophile, but this book made me want to hop on a jet to Paris so I could eat some cheese, drink some wine, and snuggle up with some 100-year-old scandalous journals. Basically, I wanted to become the furniture expert, just without the emotional baggage.