“This. This was the last time I’d been truly happy. My year abroad. It hit me then that I no longer knew the young woman who had fallen in love with Colin and Jean Claude and Marcelino. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be topsy-turvy, dizzy from a smile, ass-over-tea-kettle crushing on someone.”
Getting older can be wonderful. You are your own person, independent, and the whole world is waiting for you. But it can be scary, too. You graduate from school, start college. and get a job. All the responsibility is hitting you at once and you feel yourself adapt to your new life, change.
As Audrey Hepburn once said, “Paris is always a good idea” and so is this book. In her latest novel, author Jenn McKinlay takes you on a trip through Europe in a “Eat, Pray, Love” kind of way. It is a nice and fun summer read which will hit you emotionally while taking you on a trip to some of the most beautiful places in Europe.
Sometimes you need a change of scenery to get yourself together and to understand that things might not be as bad as you thought and that the solutions were in front of you the whole time.
“Was I even capable of those feelings anymore? I didn’t know. But there was only one way to find out. I had to see them again.”
Chelsea is an independent, successful thirty-year-old who feels stuck in her life. She misses her twenty-two-year-old self, who was carefree and full of laughter, the person she was before her mother died of cancer. She started a career as a fundraiser for the American Cancer Coalition so that no one must go through what she had to. While she buries her pain in work, her sister and father carried on with their lives. Getting married, remarried, basically never stopped to love, and never closed themselves up for others.
Chelsea is desperate to feel that way again and to fill the heart with love and to be capable to accept love again. Her solution? Wander the path of her gap year and visiting her former three boyfriends she had during that time. Colin in Ireland, Jean Claude in France, and Marcelino in Italy. If someone can help her find back to her former self, it must have to be one of these guys.
What started as a self-finding trip soon gets hijacked by her coworker Jason and the favour he is calling in to get an outstanding deal signed, but that does not mean that she will not get the answers she is looking for.
McKinlay describes the feelings and doubts of her protagonist in a way that woman can identify with her. A longing for what has been good in the past, the want in holding it once again and never letting it go while want to find yourself in the world.
At first, I was not pleased with the fact that a woman thinks that she can only find her former self through her ex-boyfriends, but it turned out to be the opposite because my girl Chelsea had her doubts sooner than I expected which makes me proud of her. Do not forget that if you have changes over the years, then everyone else might as well.
The story became more interesting when Chelsea’s coworker, Jason, followed her to Europe to convince her to help him and the organisation to sign one of the biggest deals ever with an investor. From that point on, it was quite obvious how the story would continue, but it sure got funnier the moment Jason was in the story because said exactly what I was thinking about Chelsea’s decisions.
Personally, I liked the setting and the characters as I was able to connect with the story from the first page, especially being around the same age as Chelsea as well as being through some of the same things.
I think it is great and love when a book speaks to its reader. I salute every author and at the moment, I salute Jenn McKinlay!
Paris Is Always A Good Idea is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 21st 2020.
Will you be picking up Paris Is Always A Good Idea? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
It’s been seven years since Chelsea Martin embarked on her yearlong post-college European adventure. Since then, she’s lost her mother to cancer and watched her sister marry twice, while Chelsea’s thrown herself into work, becoming one of the most talented fundraisers for the American Cancer Coalition, and with the exception of one annoyingly competent coworker, Jason Knightley, her status as most talented fundraiser is unquestioned.
When her introverted mathematician father announces he’s getting remarried, Chelsea is forced to acknowledge that her life stopped after her mother died, and that the last time she can remember being happy, in love, or enjoying her life was on her gap year. Inspired to retrace her steps–to find Colin in Ireland, Jean Claude in France, and Marcelino in Italy–Chelsea hopes that one of these three men who stole her heart so many years ago, can help her find it again.
From the start of her journey nothing goes as planned, but as Chelsea reconnects with her old self, she also finds love in the very last place she expected.
