The Crafty Princess Diaries

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is one of the books I received for review as part of Crown Publishing’s Blogging for Books program. Bloggers agree to post reviews of books they select through the program in return for a free copy of the book. This, of course, can be kind of fun sometimes if you really like the book, or it can be awkward when you don’t like that book. That is my story with The Little Paris Bookshop. I really, really want to like this book, but I’m just not getting into it like I thought I would.

The premise of the book sounded really promising to me. The protagonist operates a book store in Paris. Not only is it in Paris, France, but the shop is inside a boat floating on the Seine. That was enough to get me interested, but it got better. The proprietor of the shop, Monsieur Perdu,  prescribes books to patrons as if he is dispensing medication. He feels their emotional stress and knows the perfect story to help them out.

It sounds enchanting! However, I kept putting it down. First of all, I actually didn’t really like Perdu. He seems pathetic and overly dramatic to the point I couldn’t really buy into his character. That was really enough to put me off because I have a thing about characters in novels. If I don’t at least like them, I have to care about them enough to keep reading. I finally stopped around page 80 of this 390 page book. When I was in graduate school, I had to force myself to read a lot of work I did not like, and at my age, I now feel life is too short to read a book you don’t want to read when you don’t have to read it.

I did go surf around for other reviews of this book because I was curious if I was just off the mark on this book since it sounded so promising, and most seem to have a similar reaction to mine. Though, a few say that you need to push through to some place in the book where the protagonist and other characters take off on a trip and sail on the book shop/boat.

So, the book is still on my shelf with the bookmark placed in the spot I left off, and maybe, I will pick it up again some day. But, I am making no promises.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.