It's Not Love, It's Just Paris

A Novel

By: Patricia Engel

Narrated by: Alexandra Shawnee

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's Summary

Patricia Engel’s collection of stories, Vida, quickly established her as one of our country’s best young writers, winning praise from Junot Daz, Uzodinma Iweala, Francisco Goldman, and others. Her first novel is a vibrant and wistful narrative about an American girl abroad in Paris, who navigates the intoxicating and treacherous complexities of independence, friendship, and romance.

Lita del Cielo, the daughter of two Colombian orphans who arrived in America with nothing and made a fortune with their Latin food empire, has been granted one year to pursue her studies in Paris before returning to work in the family business. She moves into a gently crumbling Left Bank mansion known as “The House of Stars”, where a spirited but bedridden Countess Séraphine rents out rooms to young women visiting Paris to work, study, and, unofficially, to find love.

Cautious and guarded, Lita keeps a cool distance from the other girls, who seem at once boldly adult and impulsively naive, who both intimidate and fascinate her. Then Lita meets Cato, and the contours of her world shift. Charming, enigmatic, and weak with illness, Cato is the son of a notorious right-wing politician. As Cato and Lita retreat to their own world, they soon find it difficult to keep the outside world from closing in on theirs. Ultimately Lita must decide whether to stay in France with Cato or return home to fulfill her immigrant family’s dreams for her future.

It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris is a spellbinding love story, a portrait of a Paris caught between old world grandeur and the international green-blood elite, and an exploration of one woman’s journey to distinguish honesty from artifice and lay claim to her own life.

©2013 Patricia Engel (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Well worth the credit

I got lost in this book. Loved the writing and the narrator Alexandra Shawnee was spot on in her sensitive portrayal and accents. Overall excellent!

Enjoyed this very much

I got this one because I love Paris. The story kept my interest and the narrator Romy Nordlinger really made it come alive. Very enjoyable.

Well written book, not well read.

What didn’t you like about Alexandra Shawnee’s performance?

Her Spanish was awful. She was supposed to be reading as a Colombian, bi-lingual, Spanish speaking young woman. Every time she had to say something in Spanish, there was no apparent effort whatsoever to pronounce the word in Spanish. She would just say the Spanish words in English. Her French was strong.

Not worth the Narrator

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend the physical book, but not the audiobook.

What didn’t you like about Alexandra Shawnee’s performance?

The narrator was robotic in this performance. I almost didn't finish the book because of the narration.

If you could take any character from It's Not Love, It's Just Paris out to dinner, who would it be and why?

My initial reaction was to take the main character out; but then I remembered how she dropped out of school for a relationship destined to fail. I can't tolerate those kinds of characters.

Any additional comments?

I hated the narration and the main character bugged me, but somehow I still enjoyed the book. Maybe it's because its just Paris...