Looking For a Good Book

What do you do when you’re an Alabama debutante and you’ve disgraced your family name in the 1920s?  You move to Paris and become friends with Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, of course! At least that’s what Zoe Barlow does after she’s been sent packing from Beech Glen, the family plantation, by her older brother and her stepmother.

Zoe is an artist and finds comfort and camaraderie among the bohemian artists in Paris just after the War to End All Wars. One day Hadley Hemingway contacts Zoe. In a rush, she left a bag on the train, and in the bag was Ernest’s latest manuscript – the only copy, of course. Hadley fears it may have been stolen and asks for Zoe’s help to track it down. But in the process of searching for the manuscript the pair discovered the murdered bodies of a Russian man and his daughter, rumored to be the Princess Anastasia Romanov.

As more people around her are murdered, Zoe realizes that there may be much more than a missing manuscript at stake and that unfortunately it would seem that someone in her bohemian artist circle  is the killer.

I have found that I enjoy historical fiction set in the 1920’s and this book, with its artists in Paris, really sounded like something I could sink my teeth into. What I found, though was a book that was perfectly fine.

Fine.  Just fine.

Paris. Artists. 1920’s. A missing Hemingway manuscript. This book should have been much more than just fine. This should have been an exciting adventure but it lacked the energy and grit to really make this story work. It moved along steadily but there was no building of excitement and present danger, despite the attempts to create such (she’s nervous enough to start carrying her own gun, but that nervousness was never shown, only described). Any solid mystery needs to have some ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ to keep the reader engaged but the even pacing was a disservice to the story.

I never fully understood Zoe’s character.  Her banishment from her home, her being an artist herself – never came into play other than to put her into a place where she would meet Hadley Hemingway.

Looking for a good book? Lost in Paris by Betty Webb has some nice descriptions and a great time-frame and location, but is otherwise an all-around average read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest  review.

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Lost in Paris

author: Betty Webb

series: Lost in Paris #1

publisher: Poisoned Pen Press

ISBN: 9781728269900

paperback, 272 pages