The Lost Girls of Paris

The latest First Words are from Pam Jenoff’s The Lost Girls of Paris:

New York, 1946

If not for the second-worst mistake of Grace Healey’s life, she never would have found the suitcase.

Meh… But she really started losing me halfway through the next paragraph…

…corralling her corkscrew hair into a low knot. She quickly removed her coat, despite the chill, so she could take off her mint green cardigan. She didn’t want Frankie to notice it was the exact same one she had been wearing at work the previous day and question the unthinkable: whether she had gone home at all.

Grace paused to study herself in the window of a five-and-dime. She wished the store was open so she could  buy some powder to hide the marks on her neck and sample a bit of perfume to conceal the stench of day-old brandy mixed with that delicious-but-wrong smell of Mark’s aftershave…

Which is where I stopped, rolling my eyes. I rode out my annoyance at the protagonist and granny in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, and found it at least relatively worth it. Book club kept me committed. Grace is just too frivolous for me to keep dealing with at the moment. I have other books I’d like to read, and although I’m interested in the premise of the book, I’m setting it aside, at least for now.

I may come back, because I never seem to read too many World War II stories. I also recently enjoyed Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network, which is, in large part, about women spies in WW I, inspired by a true story.

The Lost Girls of Paris is about women spies in WW II, inspired by true events. Perfect. So, like I said, I may come back. But for now, I’m moving on. And putting this one back on the NEW shelf at my library, for someone else to enjoy.

I previously read Pam Jenoff’s The Orphan’s Tale. 

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