The Parisian Spy

A Gripping WW2 Love Story

De: Hannah Byron

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

A heart-racing WWII historical fiction novel of love, betrayal, and the courage to resist in the darkest of times.

Paris, 1942.

In a city ruled by fear, French American medical student Océane Bell wants only to save lives—not risk her own. While training at the Sorbonne and tending to wounded civilians at Hôtel-Dieu, she tries to stay focused on healing, far from politics and war.

But everything changes the day she meets Jean-Jacques Riveau—a charismatic artist turned resistance fighter. When the Gestapo arrests him, Océane is thrust into a world of espionage and peril. Desperate to save the man she loves, she infiltrates 84 Avenue Foch, the Gestapo’s Paris headquarters, offering her skills as a doctor to the ruthless SS commander, Dieter Von Stein.

In a deadly game of deception and survival, Océane must use her wit and courage to outmaneuver one of the Nazis’ most dangerous men. With love and justice on the line, how far will she go to protect both?

Inspired by real wartime operations and filled with emotional intensity, The Parisian Spy is perfect for fans of The Nightingale, Code Name Hélène, and The Alice Network. It’s a gripping story of bravery, forbidden love, and a woman who defied evil from within its heart.

The virtual voice was horrible.

The story is intriguing and gives a different perspective on the resistance. The virtual voice was horrific. Constant mispronunciation and misreading homophones. It butchered names and places. It paused in odd places. It almost ruined the series for me. The editor of the virtual voice should be tied to a chair and for to listen until correction are made. “Tires sprang from her eyes?” Really. Did no one listen to the virtual voice before releasing it??

AWFUL Performance

Sounds absolutely terrible- like a child learning to read but without the endearing quality of being a child. This has to be AI and it’s bad AI. I couldn’t get past the second chapter.

La Résistance

I belong to a Woman Veterans on line book club, and ‘The Parisian Spy’ was the March pick. The January pick was ‘In Picardy’s Fields’ and February was ‘The Diamond Courier’. I hadn’t been able to find the time to read-read any of them but Audible suddenly released them all last week, in time for me to get the listen in before my meeting. I was glad at first and thrilled by the end of the book.

Océane Bell is a French American student studying medicine at the Sorbonne. The circumstances that bought her to a Europe on the brink of a world war were quite interesting and gave her motivations that were compelling. She often did unexpected things, and was rarely a cliché.

Hannah Byron weaves in actual locations and historical figures into the story with ease. There’s the fictional artist Jean-Jacques Riveau, called Rémix, Océane’s boyfriend, who knows real French painters. Byron describes the actual Paris SS counterintelligence (Sicherheitsdienst) headquarters at 84 Rue Foch and creates the fictional Dieter von Stein, who appears to have been based on the actual Hans Josef Kieffer, as its evil head. Byron doesn’t give an overview of the place, she describes it only from the point of view of her characters. Her narrative doesn’t intrude; it encourages learning more.

That brings me to the Audible narration. It’s an artificial voice, and while it is pleasant, there were some jarring misreads - using the word genealogist for gynecologist will sure pull you out of a story about a doctor real fast. I don’t speak German, but the French in the narrative - ouch. I didn’t know there were so many ways to pronounce The Seine, or for that matter, Océane or her nickname, Océ. I got used to it and stopped noticing it after a while, and the story and the characters were worth riding it out. I do hope the author’s publishers find their way to giving this book the top notch Audible performance it deserves. Bahni Turpin or XE Sands would be great for this.