Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - The Paris Apartment

We follow Jess, who left her life in England to live with her brother Ben in Paris. When she arrives to Ben's apartment in Paris, she notices he disappeared, he isn't returning her calls and left the apartment without his wallet. So, she is convinced that something happened to her brother, and she won't stop until find what it was and where he is. She must start on his brother building, which seems to be full of weirdos.

Unfortunately, is full of French bias, not because they are French are all promiscuous or are sexually driven... Mixing mystery with sexual content was definitely not my ally. With a big variety of personalities, I imagine a murder and identify the killer from the beginning, so most of the time I was really confused with all the sexual content, that for me was not necessary at all... Nevertheless, I didn't expect the twist at the end...

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suchallie's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Overall a good read, different from the other two I’ve read by this author. The structure was interesting. The twists and turns often outed themselves just before they happened and it picked up far too much in the last 40 pages compared to the slow burn of the rest of the book

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dcnireads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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cc_shelflove's review against another edition

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mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Man. My overall description of this book: A whole lot of talking without much investigating. Literally nothing happened for the vast majority of it. 🫠 All the way at 60%, the characters were STILL prattling on about how everything “went bad” when Ben arrived, but still nothing had been revealed! What was Ben doing? What went bad? Is this whole book just full of all of the characters complaining and disliking each other? Ahhhhh!

Now that we’ve gotten that rant out of the way, the ending was actually very good! I really liked the twist, granted it took over 300 pages to get there. Excruciatingly boring, but almost worth it, I guess? I bet there’s a lot of people who despise this book. 😅 I’ll sit right in the middle at three stars. Although I’m glad I never have to read it again. 😂

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throwback682's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Somewhat of a love it or hate it type book. I wish I could rate it on how much I enjoyed it (3.0) vs. how much I think many others might enjoy it (4.25). I saw five star reviews written in excited all caps, and a one star that said they wish they could fight the book next to a Burger King dumpster LOL.

As others said, I think it kind of dragged on. Some of the twists were predictable - but I find it hard to believe the reviews where people said they predicted ALL of them. The ending did really shock me. Part of me wishes I’d read Cliff’s Notes of the first half of the book and listened to the second half.

For a long time I thought perhaps the family secrets had something to do with

Nazis. Because of Nick’s comment in the Cave about the Gestapo, the mysterious origins of Sophie and the concierge. etc.

I’m not sure if that was intentional or just me?

The audiobook narration seems to be where I differ from most reviewers. I found this book corny at times, and the acting was EXTRA corny. I rolled my eyes at Sophie’s going on and on about how thin and put together she is, but listening to Mimi speak was 10x worse. I don’t see why one actor can’t do all the characters: in fact, the actors DO play multiple characters. When Nick speaks in Jess’s chapters, Jess’s actor voices his quotes, not his actor. That could’ve been done through the whole thing. It just felt really cheesy in an already kind of cheesy book. [I had the same problem with the audiobook for the Hunting Party.]

The audiobook recording includes a podcast interview of the author at the end, and honestly, hearing some analysis of the book improved my opinion of it somewhat. I don’t think there are any spoilers in it? So I might recommend folks listen to that before they listen to the book itself perhaps?

NOTHING in this book was the bisexual representation we wanted.

Three members of the same family fucking or trying to fuck the same guy was… Yeah, corny, like I said. And then Nick, who’s already fooled around with Ben, also almost sleeps with Ben’s sister? But oops he’s actually completely gay and it’s only because she reminds him of her brother. Eye roll. And yes I knew way before the “reveal” that Mimi’s roommate was f**king Antoine’s wife. Nice try.

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meaghanslibrary's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Hmm I feel like this is more in between a 3.75 and a 4.

The way I realized the author writes mysteries is with light cliffhangers. The chapters are short and alternate points of view. Each chapter ends with a bit of a longing for wanting more but it’s not so much that you’ll get nightmares or stay up all night thinking about it if you don’t read the whole book in one sitting.

To some extent, I enjoyed that for the health of my sleeping habits. But on the other hand, I think the best mysteries on the ones I couldn’t put down.

The big twist that they were a family really got me that had a lot of shock factor. But after that the subsequent twists I semi expected. For instance the connection between the housekeeper character and the granddaughter seemed the most obvious. The wine cellars being used as a way to pay for women was not surprising. The fact that Ben was still alive was kind of shocking although I did suspect the dad was in fact killed but that Ben probably also was killed.

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jenna_justi2004's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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