I recently embarked on an impromptu Lucy Foley mini-marathon, consuming three of her books in a row over the course of a couple of weeks. I guess I was just in the mood for something engaging and exciting but not super complex. This will be the first three of the reviews, and it is the first one I completed. I won’t spend a whole lot of time on these reviews while I’m attempting to catch up, so don’t expect any of the reviews to be extremely detailed.

Synopsis

Jess, an extremely down on her luck woman who finds herself needing to flee after getting herself into a spot of trouble, heads to Paris to stay with her half brother. When Jess arrives, she finds that Ben lives in a lavish apartment that seems a little outside the economic grasp of a struggling journalist. Also, he was expecting her arrival, so when Jess arrives and Ben is nowhere to be seen, she begins to get suspicious. Her suspicions grow with each tenant she encounters, each with varying degrees of friendliness but all with an interest in her that makes her uneasy. As Ben’s absence becomes more and more unsettling, Jess begins to uncover clues that point to a hidden truth Ben had stumbled upon that someone else wished to stay buried, even if it meant silencing Ben to make sure the story never surfaced.

Review

Having read three of her books now, I do admire the fact that Lucy Foley comes up with fresh ideas. I don’t find her thrillers to be formulaic, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine in the thriller genre. There are similarities, but not enough to make me feel like she takes the same plot and changes names and a few details and calls it a day. There’s maybe SOME of this in the next two books I’ll review, but it’s not the case with this one. More on that later.

Her characters are well developed, being fairly complex with compelling backstories that unfold as the story progresses. I like that her characters are both difficult to love and difficult to hate, a quality that should be present if a character is properly developed in a book such as this. The Paris Apartment is well paced, really picking up toward the middle and end and bursting toward a dramatic conclusion. Thankfully, I also didn’t feel like this one had too much predictability. There wasn’t much that was utterly shocking, so I didn’t have to pick my jaw up off the floor, but there were a few scattered surprises that kept things interesting.

Overall, I would say this one is a pretty standard but enjoyable thriller and would make for a great winter fireside read.

Published February 22, 2022 by William Morrow. ISBN 9780063003057. Hardcover. 360 pages.