(3.5 / 5)

A story of survival at all costs and the aftermath of war and trauma, Paris Never Leaves You is told in alternating timelines. Charlotte survived occupied Paris and moved to America to start a new life, but the past is never quite in the past. One letter is all it takes to bring back a flood of memories and unravel Charlotte's life.

There's plenty to appreciate about this book, from the descriptions of life in occupied Paris to the very real trauma involved in later years. Charlotte's daughter deals with prejudice and strives to learn more about the heritage that has people hating her for no reason. I had no issues with the dual time periods, and appreciated seeing a different part of WWII than I've most often read about in books.

You may read some reviews where it mentions the romances in this book--one in each time period. Let's not kid ourselves--none of this is "romance." Charlotte's decisions in Paris are the kind where you can't really say what you'd do unless you're in the situation yourself. Her decisions in New York nearly ruined the book for me. There was no need for the relationship to happen the way it did (or at all, really), and I'm just not a fan of infidelity romance. Her reason for not getting off his lap when he gave her the wheelchair ride was a cop-out, plain and simple, and it went downhill from there, for me.

All that said, I am glad I read the book. It brings up a lot of moral quandaries, from start to finish. It can really make you think, questioning how you would act in that situation, both in Charlotte's shoes, but also in many other characters'. I do think that fans of historical fiction, especially WWII/Holocaust related fiction, will like this book. But steer clear if you don't like your heroines getting involved with married men. Also be aware, there is at least one slightly graphic physical encounter in the book, though fortunately not very much of it.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me a copy of this book to review. ( )

Ten years after Paris was liberated, Charlotte Foret lives in New York but is still in chains. No one’s threatening her anymore; she has her beloved daughter, Vivi, now fourteen; and a career as an editor at a prestigious publishing house, Gibbon & Field. Her boss, Horace Field, is also her landlord, for the Forets live in his East Side brownstone.

Further, Horace and his wife, Hannah, sponsored Charlotte and Vivi to come to the United States after their internment at Drancy, the camp in the Paris suburbs that was a way-station to Auschwitz. Charlotte loves her job and is grateful for the apartment and the sponsorship, but the arrangement feels more than a little awkward, especially since Hannah, a psychoanalyst, has plenty of parenting advice to give, though she herself is childless.

As the novel opens, these threads threaten to unravel, first via a letter from Bogotá that she can’t bear to read. (Melodramatic, but okay, I’ll bite.) More plausibly, Vivi asks about her heritage, specifically about her father, killed in the war, and what it means to be Jewish.

But Charlotte has always said that it took Hitler to make her a Jew, and she wants no part of such explorations. Charlotte’s so adamant, so resolutely opposed to reflection on or discussion of her past — their past, for Vivi lived through the war too — that you have to wonder whether psychoanalyst Hannah has a point. Charlotte’s not only too tightly wrapped, she’s a lousy mother, forbidding her child to discover her identity. To all and sundry, however, Charlotte says, with truth, You weren’t there, so you don’t know.

But Charlotte’s memory of Vivi’s sufferings is by no means the whole truth. Paris Never Leaves You excels as a moral tale, for Charlotte’s secret feels so shameful to her that she believes — with reason — that to confess it would make her a pariah. Specifics here would spoil the suspense; I advise against reading the jacket flap, clever and subtle though it is.

Feldman brings alive Paris under the Occupation, as she does New York publishing, some scenes of which are positively delicious. In Charlotte and Horace, she’s created two memorable characters, and the dialogue between them crackles like a moral duel, full of challenge and riposte. Horace wants, nay, demands that Charlotte think and reflect on who she is and what she believes, and as a result, the novel pushes the reader to do the same. That’s what Paris Never Leaves You has to offer.

But, if you’re like me, you’ll have to overlook several flaws, starting with the bland title, which sounds like the compromise offspring of a deadlocked editorial meeting, and the cover, which says nothing except, “See, here’s the Eiffel Tower, so guess where this story takes place?”

More seriously, a key aspect of Charlotte’s secret seems historically implausible, despite what the author maintains in an afterword. I don't believe the circumstances permitting the premise could have existed for so long, if at all. And even if you take Feldman at her word, there’s Vivi, who’s too sweet, calm, and reasonable for fourteen, and who bears nary a psychological scratch from her wartime early childhood. No nightmares, no tics, no fears, just perfectly adjusted.

As for psychological thinking, I’m tired of reading about dictatorial, heartless psychoanalysts, especially those who sleep with their analysands. It’s also unnecessary, here. Feldman didn’t have to make Hannah an expert—it takes no letters after your name to know that teenagers are trying to figure out who they are—and Hannah’s involvement in Charlotte’s life, particularly her friendship with Vivi, give her standing to sound off.

It’s also odd that nobody, not even Horace, asks Charlotte how she can feel so intensely about literature, an art that lives within reflection and self-examination, yet refuse to look at herself. To do so, of course, would reveal the exact cause of her shame, and though Feldman derives tension from that secret, Charlotte can’t even think about what she has to hide, or the reader will know.

That contrivance makes me ask whether Charlotte could have spelled out the secret in interior narrative early on, which would invite the reader deeper into her dilemma, a more generous approach, and perhaps a more genuine characterization. ( )

**I received this books as an ARC from Netgalley in return for my honest review upon completion**

I am a huge World War II historical fiction fan and have read many books from the perspective of the Jewish families who have dealt with the atrocities of the Holocaust. This book told a very different story. This is the story of a Christian widow in Paris during the Occupation, she comes to depend upon a German soldier with a secret and he helps save her and her child from the Nazis.

I enjoyed the different take on the Occupation and the story was very well told and consistently kept my attention. I believe when released this story will do well amongst fans of the genre. ( )

I was uncertain about this book going in. I loved Ellen Feldman's novel about the Scottsboro trial in the 1930s, but I've been burned before by books set in Paris during WWII and by books set in bookstores in Paris, so a book set in a Paris bookstore during WWII seems to have the highest possible chance of being terrible. Fortunately, this was not the case. Feldman has written a nuanced novel about surviving in an occupied city as a widow with a young child without romanticizing the choices she made.

This novel moves back and forth between Charlotte's experiences during and immediately after the war, and her life in New York in the 1950's where she found refuge with a former colleague of her father's. He and his wife provide her with housing and a job in publishing. Her daughter remembers little before their life in New York, where she is entering adolescence and wondering both about her father and her Jewish faith. Her daughter's questions bring back memories Charlotte is working to bury, as does a letter she receives from South America.

Feldman never romanticizes the decisions Charlotte made during the war, and she also makes each character, regardless of who they were or what they did, someone who is also making difficult and sometimes impossible choices. There are no clean consciences and no one emerges without scars. Feldman's writing is clear and she's scrupulous in both her plots and her research. While this one does not supplant Scottsboro as my favorite novel by this author, Paris Never Leaves You comes a close second. ( )

With the historical fiction section being saturated with WWII narratives lately, I thirst for a refreshingly different perspective with each read, and Paris Never Leaves You had a premise that was promising.

A dual timeline attempts to weave the past and present of Charlotte Foret, a New York publishing editor that was a different person leading a different life in Paris during WWII. Both storylines highlight relationships, “Love” that feels forced, neither relationship feeling organic, leaving me sickened and detached by the graphic sexual depictions and overall hollow feeling.

The more I read the more I disliked Charlotte. I understand she was doing what she could to survive, but I was hoping for a deeper connection with this character, but I was left wanting. This book is inspired by the ordinary women who did their best to survive this unimaginable war, and it is those who my heart goes out to the most.

There were scenes that were incredibly hard to read, with the narrative beginning with a very graphic scene, showing the horror of the concentration camps after the war had ended, and this is just the beginning!

Paris Never Leaves You is an incredibly depressing read, to say the least, and not just due to the subject matter. The overall flow feels disjointed and sluggish, and the dual timelines can be confusing, further hindering the story. The writing itself is decent, but the language and crudity was not to my taste, and took away from the overall experience for me.

I truly wanted to love Paris Never Leaves You, but it was a lackluster and disappointing read, landing in the middle of the road in the historical fiction genre for me, leaving me to continue my quest to find something different.

*I have voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from St. Martin's Press through NetGalley. All views and opinions expressed are completely honest, and my own. ( )