Book Review for Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel

 

Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel

Published:  July 28, 2026 by Gallery Books

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Paris, Romance, WWII

 

Taken from Goodreads:  Nine Americans in Paris. Seven intertwined love stories. One City of Light.

Love Actually meets The Notebook in a tale of love, loss, and finding your way home, all set over the course of one life-changing week in Paris.

Julia Glover has brought her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Piper, to Paris for the first time—but they know it will also be their last trip here together. Julia is dying, and as the mother and daughter desperately try to make memories together as the clock ticks down, the world opens up around them. Piper meets a cute French waiter, who might just understand her better than anyone she’s ever met, and Julia meets a man at a dive bar and struggles with how to tell him the truth about her future.

Rock star Jackson Quick’s glory days are behind him. He had a handful of hit songs thirty years ago, but he hasn’t toured in a decade. This week, he’ll launch his reunion tour in Paris, the city where it all began. But he wants more out of life than being defined by fame. When he meets a woman who finally sees him for who he is at his core, the ground shifts beneath his feet.

Henry McGee has been writing hit songs for decades—including Jackson Quick’s biggest hit, City of Light. But his secret is that every love song he’s ever written is for a woman named Celeste, whom he loved a lifetime ago, when they were both teenagers in Paris during World War II. He has spent eighty years believing she died—but when a letter arrives telling him the opposite, he’s on the first flight to France. Can he break through the haze of her dementia, using the songs he’s written all these years, to remind her of who they once were to each other—and to tell her he came back for her?

Henry’s granddaughter, Melody, has just discovered that her husband of twenty years, Gilles, a French cosmetics executive, is having an affair. When she confronts him, he tearfully apologizes and begs her to forgive him. But can she? And, perhaps even more importantly, does she want to? Or is there a different kind of life out there for her if she chooses to be alone?

These intertwining stories—plus several others—unfold over a few breathtaking spring days, as an unforgettable group of Americans in Paris must find their way to their own versions of happily ever after in the City of Light.

 

My Thoughts:  Meet Me in Paris is an amazing story.   There are a lot of characters all in Paris for various reasons but all of them are looking for something.   Those somethings are all different, for different reasons.  At first I thought, whoa this is a lot to grasp, a lot of stories, a lot of characters, but it was not.   The stories were easy to follow, easy to lose yourself in, and easy to get invested in.   I cared about each and every character. 

The book is not all love and life stories; there is some heaviness.   The talk of war is never light but this talked of relationships and love found.   The talk of cancer is never easy, but the author did a careful job of respecting the topic and being truthful while telling those characters stories. 

I could not put Meet Me in Paris down.  I even took it to work and found moments here and there when I could read a few pages or even a chapter.   I did not want to leave the characters or the beautiful, enchanting Paris.

Kristin Harmel is a must-read author and Meet Me in Paris is a must-read book. 

Thank you Gallery Books for a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

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