Kiss Me in Paris

Serena, 18, is not happy. The “Romance Tour” was supposed to provide an opportunity for her mother, sister and her to honour the love her mother and father shared. The three surviving members of their family were supposed to see all the places her mother and father visited while on their honeymoon in Paris 25 years earlier. Serena planned the itinerary, gathered the maps of the city and the metro system, scheduled the required 24 hours, and a made a list of all the places they need pictures of to create a beautifully memorable scrapbook for her mother. Unfortunately, when work interferes with her mother making the Tour, her sister, Lara, assumes that the trip is cancelled- without talking to Serena. So when Serena shows up on her doorstep with her exactly 50 pound suitcase and jetlag, Lara explains that she and her hot boyfriend are just leaving for a whirlwind trip to Madrid.

Undeterred, Serena decides to do the Romance Tour on her own – except, with her sister leaving on her romantic tryst, she does not have a place to stay for the night. Luckily her sister’s boyfriend has a friend with an empty room in his dorm. Enter Jean-Luc, a former New Yorker who moved to Paris with his mother as a child after his parents divorced. Jean-Luc is serious, half-French, and has his own looming deadline. He has to recreate his major photography assignment for university before school starts again in January. Although he has reluctantly agreed to Serena’s staying with him, he does not have time to babysit an American tourist. When he realizes she is planning on visiting the tourist sites, however, he has an epiphany. He needs people to photograph for his project and everyone has left for the Christmas holidays. Jean-Luc realizes, “She’s my best hope of getting good shots from my project. It could even be ironic – pretentious crowd shots where the sea of humanity obscures one’s view of the world’s greatest city.” With that, Rider establishes the plot of her novel – two disparate people with different agendas and personal foibles experience Paris together.

Kiss Me in Paris definitely has a Pride and Prejudice vibe. Jean-Luc is arrogant and dismissive of Serena who he sees as the typical American tourist. Serena has a plan and the independence to see it through without any help from a self-absorbed artist. She also has a yearning to experience love and a vulnerability that allows Jean-Luc to see more than the highly unstylish runners she wears. Over the course of the novel, the spark of attraction they share develops into something more meaningful through shared experience and as they start sharing their personal stories of loss.

With the story being told in alternating chapters by Serena and Jean-Luc, the reader sees each character through the eyes of the other. Neither character has any illusions that the other is the perfect romantic partner, and this small dose of reality adds an additional charm to the predictable tale. Kiss Me in Paris holds no surprises, but it is a sweet story of finding the right person unexpectedly.