A week in Paris

Rachel Hore has always been an author whose books I return to occassionally but enjoy immensely when I do and although I'd had her ‘A Week In Paris' on my kindle for a while I was looking forward to delving in.

There are many books now which follow Hore's preferred format, the split time period story whereby a present day mystery is linked to events of the past and the story spins between the two time periods unravelling the links and sharing it's secrets. A Week In Paris is again set within this storyline and follows Fay Knox, an accomplished violinist who has since a school trip to Paris had the sense that she remembers time spent in the city during his early childhood during the second world war. After her mother tries to take her life and learning of a week long trip to Paris with the orchestra she plays with she is directed to a convent in the city by her mother and told that they will be able to tell her about the secrets her mother never could.

Arriving in Paris Fay meets the mysterious Mme. Raymond who begins to tell her all about how her mother and father, Kitty and Eugine, met before the war and how her father's role as a doctor found them remaining in Paris during it's occupation by the Nazi troops. Fay is under the impression she had never been in Paris and believes her father died in a bombing raid in London during the war so she is intrigued and confused to learn about the risk they were at and the truth about the death of her father.

This is a wonderful story, the chapters during the occupation of Paris are incredibly moving, the way Hore tells Kitty's story and the creeping onset of danger to their lives was brilliant to read. The mystery of the story lies in not only what happened to Eugine but also in whether the storyteller Mme. Raymond can be trusted in the tale she tells and in how she came to know Kitty at all. In honesty the chapters regarding Fay's time in present day Paris were really just filler chapters to the main event for me, I read them because they held some interesting information but I kept willing the writer to get back to the war years with Kitty and for the story to continue to unfold.

As I said there are many writers now following this writing format of a split story of modern day and historic writing and whilst I truly do enjoy the books it's rare that I find myself as hooked by the present day chapters as I do by the mysteries of the past and this remained the case with A Week In Paris.

An excellent book, well written with lots of emotion and drama to keep you turning those pages.

I loved this book, have read it twice now over the years. Engrossing and heartbreaking story with a hopeful ending.