Linden Malegarde was coming to Paris for a family reunion to celebrate his father's 70th birthday and parent's wedding anniversary. It is January and the rain has been coming down in buckets. The family reunion consists of his mother and father, Lauren and Paul, Linden and his sister Tilia, Why is he feeling an undercurrent of something ominous, something wrong? Why did his mother insist on the family meeting in Paris, even though Linden lives in San Francisco, his sister lives in London and their parents live in the Drome valley? His mother did mention that Paris was more convenient. And the rain keeps coming, with fears that the Seine will overflow.

This family, with its dysfunctional background, has secrets yet to be revealed and all seen through the eyes of Linden. As the rain keeps coming, and fears escalate about the Seine overflowing, a family disaster takes over the family. Linden's father suffers a severe stroke and at the same time, his mother comes down with a bad case of the flu that turns into pneumonia. Neither one can be moved and Linden is the one holding the family together and in doing so he is "deluged" with memories and emotions.

As you keep reading, each memory, each secret is divulged in what I can only say is done in slow motion. As the story unravels (and that is the only way I can describe it), the reader is filled with so many feelings...empathy, sadness and love, Layer upon layer fills you with the need to keep reading, wanting to find the hidden secret of each character. Paris will fill you with the chaos of a city submerging in a disaster that threatens to take its charm away, the very core of it. Linden and his family will bring you to a passion filled read, it might bring you to tears (as it did me). It is powerful, it is dramatic and it is emotional on so many levels. Yes, Tatiana De Rosnay has written another worthy novel. Bravo!!

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for sending me this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.