Member Reviews
Received an advanced copy in exchange for a fair review.
I did not know this was written in verse until I started reading and it turned out to be a delightful surprise and a great reading experience. The unknown narrator tells you the story of Eugene and Tatiana at some times carefully and at other times messily, conveying the turbulent emotions of teenagers then adults meeting each other again.
The story starts in the present with the two running into each other after 10 years apart then goes back to what happened -- but doesn't quite get to what happened yet -- then returns to the present as they reconnect. We go back and forth between perspectives and the rhythm and feel of the writing carries you along wonderfully and leaves you wanting more but satisfied with the uncertain end.
This is the story of Tatiana and Eugene,
written in verse for no reason seen.
It's just broken up
prose, you guys.
It's a fast read, but the
characters are unbearable.
And who the heck is the narrator?
Marie Antionette and Louis had a more charming romance
even including the guillotines.
Maybe I'm not French enough to get it.
Or maybe something went wrong with the translation.
But I found this book quite the chore.
I stopped reading at after about 40%
because I'm not remotely interested
in what happens to these characters.
In Paris with You was just okay for me. It's written in verse, which was fun to read, for something different, but I just didn't really connect to the characters all that much...and maybe that was due to the writing style, I'm not sure. This is one of those books that I can recognize is well done and a novel that many people would enjoy, but it just wasn't for me. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
I don't entirely know how I feel about this book. It's definitely entertaining, but I also actively disliked Eugene. (Picture the world's most annoying guy, and that's Eugene. It's definitely Eugene as a teenager, hurting people because he can. He seems better as an adult but he's still pretty awful. I don't understand why Tatiana would ever spend time with him.)
This is a quick read and I enjoyed the writing and meeting Tatiana. But...this is not a great love story. It's a woman potentially settling for a jerk.
It was such a struggle to get through this book. I'm convinced that the verse works wonderfully in the original, but the translation left this story stilted and abrupt and it made me want to give up on the story ten times over. The premise was promising, but thanks to the narration it really left me unsatisfied. Not to mention that I didn't connect with any of the characters. It was a quick read, but other than that, I can't really think of anything positive to say about the book...Paris? Yes, Paris was great. So there.
Eugene and Tatiana meet on a bus ten years after their first meeting. This takes the reader onto a journey ten years back, exploring friendship, youth, love, innocence and loss.
I love how vibrant, witty, and funny Lensky is and how over time, there are changes to his understanding, mood and experience in the book.
I love the format this book is written in because having this story in verse makes it all the more interesting, as a reader you can take snippets of the story here and there. However, in kindle it makes for a frustrating read because if one is used to reading prose in the common version, your mind first thinks there is a formatting error. This book is best enjoyed, like the awesome read it is in paperback or hardback version, this much I promise you.
Thank you Netgalley for the eARC.
I wanted so badly to love this one! But full disclosure, I am not the right audience for this book. Poetry is the one genre I cannot get into, and I struggled with following the story written in that form. I think I might have appreciated the story if I had listened to it on audio. But having to read the story in verse fell flat for me (and I tried both eARC and physical book).
This was a beautiful story told in verse. It was a lovely translated work. I enjoyed this time spent with these characters. I also hope we will see more translations from this author.
I was torn between giving this a three or one star, so I settled with two. First, things I liked: the cover, the blurb, the promising cuteness of the story. BUT, here are some TWs: tasteless reference to disability and suicide, a little unbearable writing style (I do enjoy novels in verses but) + just bad arc formatting, incorrect categorization (this is not YA; the characters are 21+!).
I received an ARC copy from netgalley for my honest review, so thank you netgalley and publishers for offering me this book! ♡
Eugene and Tatiana could have fallen in love, if things had gone differently. If they had tried to really know each other, if it had just been them, and not the others. But that was years ago and time has found them far apart, leading separate lives.
Until they meet again in Paris.
What really happened back then? And now? Could they ever be together again after everything?
The cover and title is what originally drew me to this book.
This is my first book by this author. It was alltogether an easy read. ♡ I give this book a
2.5 star rating!
What if fate brought you and the one-you-threw-away back together, a decade after that bad decision?
Eugene and Tatiana were serendipitously reunited on the Metro after ten years apart. The meeting reawakened old feelings for both - some good, some bad. Beauvais beautifully explored these emotions, as well as inviting us back to the summer they spent together.
I thought the way Beauvais used verse to tell the story had a great impact on the delivery, and quickly created a blanket of emotions over me. The writing was lovely and lyrical, and I was impressed with how well she captured and created certain feelings for me.
One of my favorite characters was Lesky. He was the embodiment of all those heightened teen feelings you have. A teen Tatiana complemented him quite well, though she brought more of a youthful, starry-eyed exuberance to the tale.
This book was listed under YA, but for me, it's an adult novel. There are flashbacks to that summer, when the characters were 14 and 17, but the summer was viewed and the commentary attached was from that of adults.
It was about second chances and taking chances. It's about realizing you were young and wrong and made mistakes. It's about getting an opportunity to fix those mistakes, and it made me both smile and cry.
Though I was a little disappointed with the ending, I did enjoy the journey I took with Eugene and Tatiana, and I can imagine what came next.
I discovered I am most definitely not a fan of a book being written in verse. It was difficult to read and I had issues with the flow of the book because of it. I requested this book on Netgalley because the cover was adorable and I am a sucker for books set in Europe. However, the characters were so unlikeable, with Eugene being borderline unbearable. I'd be willing to give the author another shot with a different book, but I wasn't a fan of this at all.
In Paris With You is an in-depth character study of both love and our two main characters. Starting with the present, and a re-connection, the story then takes us back to the love story. Where it all begun. And that's where it lost me. There's no doubt that In Paris With You is written beautifully. There were lines that I really loved, that I'd even see as a quote print. But the narration style was pretty abstract and stream of consciousness. We were pulled from thought to thought and having read 25% I wasn't sure I really liked the characters, nor felt drawn to finish. Not to mention that there were some problematic elements which is mentioned in some other Goodreads reviews which I found just in the bits I read - the main character pretends to be pregnant on the metro, but then makes up a backstory where she has a baby with down syndrome and then jokes about it, or their careless approach to depression/suicide. And that's just what I encountered so far.
I really tried to like this book but just couldn’t do it. It is written in verse which at times made the story confusing. The characters are a bit annoying and the ending seemed ambiguous. Just not my cup of tea unfortunately.
In Paris with you is a quaint story that asks the age of question of "what happens when you fall in love and bump into each other years later?" Can you pick up where you left off or are you different people now? I just love stories that take place in Paris especially when we are young. I loved this book to pieces it celebrates love in a magical city in a remarkable way.
I think this may have been a translation issue? I felt like this story was really choppy and too similar to Eleanor and Park. Not a favorite of mine.
This book is marketed as a YA novel but honestly, I think it’s for older readers. In Paris with You is the English translation of a book that was wildly popular in France. It reminds me on Rainbow Rowell’s “Eleanor & Park”. It had the same feel to it, even if the story is not the same.
Eugene and Tatiana first meet when he is 17 and she is 14. He is the best friend of her older sister’s boyfriend. They meet again 10 years later and the feelings they had for each other are still there but has too much time gone by? Have too many things happened? Will they finally act upon their love? What drove them apart 10 years ago?
I’m still processing this. It was a pleasant enough read but the ending left me longing, but perhaps that’s the point of the whole book.
This book was not for me.
I was drawn to it because it had Paris in the title and I'm a sucker for France.
I didn't like the way the story was told, which came across as very choppy. I'm not sure if it was my copy or the way it was written but it was very disjoined and many times I wasn't aware of who was actually talking. Was I reading something from the narrator's point of view or someone else's?
Had the style of this been different I would've liked it A LOT more. As it was, having to figure out who was saying (or thinking) something was distracting me from the story itself to the point where I couldn't continue.
This style wasn't for me but I can see how it would appeal to others.
Eugene Onegin was one of the rare books I read in high school without skipping pages or passages and liked in the end. And while I'm not big on retellings, I decided to give this one a chance because the synopsis just got to me.
This book is an easy read and a fairly entertaining one. It started off so well, light, playful tone in the writing whose silliness made it hard to put this book down. But then it brings up an unexpected storyline which simply doesn't go with the tone that the book is written in. The biggest influence this storyline has on the rest of the events in the book is that it makes the characters suddenly unlikeable, it simply puts one off reading the rest. Tatiana, a fourteen-year-old at the time of Lensky's suicide, brings up the event with ease as if it's unfinished business between her and Eugene and shows no compassion for him, Eugene was there and saw it happen. Eugene on the other hand, who was seventeen when it happened, shows an unbelievable amount of coldness about it - no emotion whatsoever. The actual thing that stands between them, Eugene's initial rejection, when he was seventeen and Tatiana was fourteen, is taken as the more serious matter at hand. Tatiana takes it so seriously, forgetting that they were both teenagers when it took place and she just doesn't let it go, which makes me wonder about whether or not any maturing took place on her part in the ten years since this happened. Surprisingly, and despite his ongoing numbness (which I suppose is due to the symptoms of depression he shows quite a bit of throughout the read), Eugene is the one who's developed and matured over the years.
And I almost let all of this slide. Cause I love Eugene Onegin and novels written in verse are always a hit for me. But then the book ended, without really ending. The romance threads intertwined throughout this book don't get tied into a decent knot at the end, rather a really loose one that left me wishing that there's fanfiction out there that's gonna tighten it up. But that part, I just couldn't let go of. Just two days? Really? No decent conclusion?
And so, much like the book itself, this review ends without a decent conclusion.
This is a story about Eugene and Tatiana, who met while they were teenagers and then are reunited years later in Paris. The story alternates between past and present, telling of the ups and downs of their relationship. It was definitely different, I had never read a book in verse, but thought it fit the story. It helped move the story along quickly and gave the author opportunities of writing herself in as a commentator. This was also different and takes on a modernist approach. The book is being advertised as a YA book, but I feel like it should have gone towards an older audience. The characters are in their twenties and Eugene's thinking is a little more mature.
I thought it started out really cute and made me laugh a few times, but then all of the sudden it took this dramatic turn. I was okay with it, but the book did not go where I was thinking it would go. It is also not your typical happy ending, it kind of ends ambiguously. That's not the kind of endings I usually like, but I'm okay with it, perhaps because I never really got invested in the characters.