Review: The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris

The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the second book I've received from BookBrowse to review or discuss by this author. I loved it as much as the first--The Story Collector--which I've also reviewed.

Evie, in both books, has sent the heroine away from home to find herself. In the first, an American woman runs off to Ireland. In this one, an Irish lass of 29, answers an advertisement for an assistant manager of a bakery in Paris. Edith has had little experience with dating or socializing of any sort in her young life since her mother was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis and Edie has devoted herself to her mother's care. Having been an only child she wanted to help her Dad and also spend as much time with her mother as possible. Now that her mother has died, she feels a need to get out into the world and decide what her life should be.

Right at the beginning, it appears self-discovery may not be an easy feat. Once in Paris, she discovers that the bakery is not there but rather in a town 40 miles away on a street that if followed, it would seem, leads to Paris. Arriving with jet lag, tired and bedraggled she is met at the train by a truculent teen, who brings her face to face with an equally brusque and non-smiling elderly woman, Mme. Moreau, propietor of the bakery.

Evie Woods just draws the reader in and so I read the book in one sitting on a cold snowy Spring day in Vermont. With no pain au chocolat in sight I made due with hot chocolate, adding a dash of vanilla in salute to Pierre Moreau, who, though dead, has a hand in the proceedings .

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Review: The Husbands: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Novel

The Husbands: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Novel by Holly Gramazio
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Received a copy of this book from BookBrowse for discussion. It was okay. Lauren, who has been unlucky in love and about to give up the search, comes home from a party to find a man in her apartment. His name is Micael and he is her husband ! Just one problem, Lauren has never laid eyes on him before. To make a long and somewhat tedious story short, it seems that Lauren's attic is the source of a revolving door of husbands, lovers, one night stands, or one second appearances of men she has never seen before. Some she keeps for awhile, others she sends back to the attic almost before their feet have touched the ground. There are hundreds of them, within the stretch of maybe a week or two. Exhausting, I'm sure--it was exhausting to read. Shallow and superficial. In most cases, the men have already married her--so they have not rejected her, but she sure sends them away.

In the end, she gets tired of the whole scene and settles for one --end of story. Painful reading except for one guy, who is in the same boat, only he's one of the guys who keeps getting sent back by one woman after another, all over the world. I liked him-they should have been the couple to end the book but that would have been too easy, I suppose.

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