Member Reviews
This was certainly an interesting premise. A character jumping back and forth through time in France, changing things and ever-so-slightly amending the future that's known to a few. I really enjoyed the jumps back in time and found they were fun to read. It did feel a little long in places and the ending was a tad disappointing and sad, but obviously the way the author knew the story would end.
Much better than the blurb indicates!
How refreshing to read a time travel novel that doesn't have an improbably tanned and also improbably kilted highland warrior on the front! Instead, we got a fascinating story blending history and time travel, with a hint of sci-fi and the smallest dash of paranormal. Wonderful.
I love time travel stories that are more sci-fi and less romance, and I didn't find the small bit of romance in this to be at all irritating. I did like the basic idea of the places and ways of travel, and the history was interesting.
I do think that the 'blurb' written next to the 'buy me' part of the page does not give a true impression of how good this book is, and perhaps should be rewritten! Believe me, the book is much better than the impression given. Try it!
I was so confused when I read this book - it wasn't badly written, the story line was great the characters were also great I just didn't gel with the style of writing and there was just so much to think about it. It was descriptive but this book just wasn't for me I'm afraid.
Unfortunately this book was archived before I was even able to download it. I'm looking forward to picking it up from the library, though. It sounds really interesting!
This was so fun and original. It really made an impression and stands out in memory. Hallie runs away to Paris, finds friends, herself, and a time-traveling anomaly. A smart, fun, and inventive read. Bittersweet and engaging. ★★★★
It's been a while since I last read a story that had time travel elements. I tend to like them or not. This book got stuck a bit in between I guess? I had some mixed feelings.
At first, the book was a bit confusing for me because things were left unexplained too much for my taste and it felt a bit chaotic thanks to that. But all of this definitely does get better throughout the book, but it just took me out of things for a bit in the beginning.
A huge plus for me was the amount of History elements present in this one. I loved reading so much about French History and thought it was a good combination with the story in general. Which also brings me to the settings; Loved the settings and the world exploring in this story!
In general, I liked the characters but they didn't reaaaally stand out to me either. They were fun to read about, but it wasn't anything spectaculair I guess. I emotionally had a hard time truly falling in love with them.
In general, this book had some plusses and some things that I wasn't super excited about. Overall it was a fun read, but I'm not sure how much I'll be recommending this book. I always recommend it tho if you're really excited about the premise of it because I like it when people just try to read a book to see what they think of it themselves, seeing how different multiple readers can respond to the same book. To me, it wasn't a spectacular read, but a fun one to read just once you know? And I hope you're going to like it, if you decide to pick it up yourself!
This wonderfully strange and beautifully written novel is entertaining and rewarding. I usually don't care for "time travel" stories, but Swift does an expert job of running the protagonist, Hallie, through the Paris of the future and Paris of yesteryear, all while Hallie is pursued by the enigmatic, The Chronometrist. The ending is satisfying, which make this an all around worthwhile--if at times a bit slow--read.
Paris Adrift is an interesting story following the excitement Hallie experiences in her break from university while she stays in Paris. She finds herself working at well-known bar, Millies, right next to the world-famous Moulin Rouge. Here she meets an interesting mix of bar staff from all over the world as she enjoys all Clichy, and Paris has to offer. A series of strange happenings pose the idea that there may be more to the bar and its staff than meets the eye.
A meeting with a bizarre woman enlightens her to the prospect of time travel through something called an anomaly, something only Hallie will be able to travel through. Focussing on a given date or time will send her forward or back throughout the turbulent history of the French city. In her travels, she sees many things, meets a host of characters and alters the path of the city forever.
The time travel plays an integral role in the narrative, something clearly set out in the opening stages of the book. This all ties together the need for Hallie to find her anomaly and travel through it. Unfortunately I found this element of the narrative a bit disjointed. It seemed so important yet little to no reference to it is made as the book goes on. And worse still, at the conclusion there is no return to the original purpose to clarify fully whether things had been a success.
That said, the time travelling elements were really well written. The locales at different times in history felt really well written, filled with life and energy. The characters in these parts of the story are fantastic and vibrant. It’s these parts of the book that for me rescued it.
Time-travel! Paris! What more could you ask for?! This book was fun, although I did feel that the characters could have been fleshed out more fully.
I was pleasantly surprised, maybe because I didn't know what to expect.
The most interesting thing to me was the way time travel worked, the fact that the time traveller could only go in different periods of time but remaining in the same city was very fascinating and different from the usual.
Hallie was an ok protagonist, nothing really wrong with her but she seemed pretty generic to me and there was nothing unique about her. Fine but not a memorable leading character. I liked her interactions with the other characters, particularly with Gabriela.
I didn't connect with the love story, it felt forced and unnecessary and Leon was also a forgettable love interest.
I‘m sad Hallie didn't have the possibility to interact more with the community of time travellers, it‘s usually a very important element in this kind of stories and it helps the readers to understand the world building since other time travellers are usually the ones explaining how everything works. The lack of this kind interaction and the fact that all the informations were given at the end of the book made everything pretty confusing.
An i teresting reads, even if it has some little problems.
Ps. The cover is stunning!
The concept of Paris Adrift sounded so unique and I am always on the lookout for books that explore new ideas in an innovative way. I was really excited when NetGalley approved me for it and I knew I was in for a crazy exciting ride.
Hallie is a geology student in the UK but she knows she has to get out of the country and find herself elsewhere. She ends up in Paris where she gets a job in a quirky bar called Millie’s next to the Moulin Rouge with a host of unusual, loveable characters. It quickly becomes obvious that not everything is at it seems at Millie’s. A strange woman turns up claiming to be a chronometrist and tasks Hallie with various missions with little explanation. Hallie discovers a time portal in the keg room of Millie’s and she begins travelling to Paris’ past, where she learns about events that happened decades ago that influenced present events in the city. It’s not until later that she travels to future Paris, where things don’t look good and she realises that she has the power to make things better. But when you play with time, you’re never far from danger.
The bond between Hallie and bartender Gabriela is really lovely to watch. Gabriela almost acts as a mother figure to Hallie and seems to understand her in a way that Hallie’s biological family perhaps never have. Hallie tells her about the time-travels and Gabriela never once disbelieves her, despite never having encountered it herself. I loved how close the community at Millie’s was and there are certainly characters amongst them that I will never forget.
I felt that the romance between Hallie and Leon was quite unnecessary. There wasn’t a lot of development before it transpired that they were in a relationship, so it felt quite sudden. I liked both of their characters individually and thought they were quite sweet together but I couldn’t fully invest myself in their romance. It did feel that it was simply thrown in to tick some sort of ‘romance’ box rather than something that the characters organically entered into.
The overriding theme to my thoughts after finishing Paris Adrift was the impact that your experiences have on your life. The places you’ve been to, the people you meet and the adventures you have all have a long-lasting effect that change you on a personal level. Hallie finishes in a much better, clearer headspace than where she was at the start of the book and it can only be because of her insane summer in Paris.
Although the end of the book had a bittersweet tang, it was a satisfactory and realistic ending. Of course, with the amount of time-meddling taking place, there were going to be some sacrifices somewhere. A neatly tied up happy ending would have felt very contrived, so I appreciated the fact that Swift didn’t exactly give us one.
Paris Adrift is a unique read that will delight time-travel fans in a way they haven’t experienced before. Full of memorable, loveable characters, quirky stories and more than a little humour, strap yourself in for the ride.
I was really interested in the time travel aspect of this book. I definitely enjoyed it however I did find it to be a little slow paced for me. I love a good sci-fi novel and this one doesn’t disappoint.
The plot was very interesting and entertaining, but the writing sold it for me!! I had a good reading experience with this novel!
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! Couldn't wait to get back to it every night! Kept me hooked until the very end! I have already recommended it to family and friends!
This was beautiful, moving and steeped in French history. It was definitely a world that I could fall in love with, with a system of time travel that was interesting and an order of people who I'd definitely like to find more about.
This was a book steeped in politics, past, present and future and so it was really interesting to read about. It was also really cool to see Hallie find a new life for herself, both in present day Paris just after the revolution. I really liked seeing the past through her eyes and watching her meet people and work to find a way to live in such dangerous part of history.
Hallie shows a bravery during her adventures that goes beyond the weapon wielding badassery of most YA girls. This is a bravery that has a different fight. This is a girl who's dropped into history at random and just makes a life for herself until she can return to her own time.
The strength showed by all the characters was truly something inspiring.
It was ok i guess. It took me absolutely ages to trawl through it because i constantly lost interest and found something better to do.
Paris Adrift follows a young woman called Hallie making a new life for herself in Paris, France, and ends up figuring out that in particular places in the city, she’s able to time travel. But the future of the world may depend on things Hallie can change in the past - she just has no idea.
This book is pretty strange, and at times complex and it’s one that when I initially started it, I was afraid I may have had to DNF it but it actually completely gripped me and even though not everything made sense to me, I really enjoyed the ride it took me on.
I don’t think will be a book for everyone but if you’re a reader willing to take a chance on a twisting, strange tale with a science fiction element (aka time travel!) then I would say to give it a go. But also don’t be too surprised if for the first quarter you have no idea what’s going on.
I actually genuinely would have been able to read this book without the opening chapter showing a very horrible future, and people discussing incumbents, anomalies and time travel. It left me feeling really confused but once I was in Hallie’s POV, I was able to follow the story and what was happening to her. I think Leon’s connection with Hallie would have even been better if it was a surprise for us, the readers.
I liked the ending and how things wrapped up though I wasn’t mad about Hallie and Leon’s relationship because I felt no chemistry between the two of them. It kind of felt like the author put them together just because she should, and they didn’t have enough real moments for me to really love them together. They always seemed more like close friends than two people in love to me.
I really enjoyed Hallie’s time travel and would have liked more sections like when she traveled to 1875 and we could really see what she was doing. It felt like we got a good look at 1875, a simpler look at WW2 Paris and then pretty much nothing of her other time travel adventures. I would have liked more of them and less of Hallie’s time in Millies.
I did really enjoy this book though and it’s one I’d tentatively recommend to others with a warning to just give it a fair chance.
I love myself a time travel story, and both the premise as well as the cover here caught my eye. Unfortunately, even though ultimately it was a quick an easy read (as opposed to a book I trudged through), I wasn’t sold on the story or the characters.
I think this is due to the prologue letting me expect a more ‘targetted’ time travel story: a group of time travellers (called ‘incumbents’) holed up in a bunker in Prague, the world dying around them due to a nuclear apocalypse. This war having been triggered by a speech made at the Sacre-Coeur in Paris, the group decides to send one of them back in time in order to prevent that man’s lineage from ever starting. But there’s a catch here: these incumbents can only travel using ‘anomalies’ to which they’re attuned, and since they can’t use someone else’s Anomaly, in this case they need to send someone with an Anomaly in Paris. Which turns out to be Léon, an incumbent with too many travels under his belt, who may or may not be able to perform -all- the time jumps needed to alter the past. Léon does jump, but his aim tis to find a budding traveller in 2017 Paris, and guide them to discover their Anomaly, then to perform the required jumps while they’re still ‘fresh’, so to speak. Along with Léon comes the chronometrist, a former traveller who lost her body (and probably her sanity, too), and whose task is to guide the new incumbent.
…And that’s where it started to turn wrong, because for most of the book, the plot felt only remotely touched, with our new incumbent, Hallie, being guided in such a circumvented way that from beginning to end, I’m not sure she really got what she was doing. And I’m not sure why that was, considering one of Léon’s directives (stated in the prologue, no spoiler here) was to guide her once her ‘mission’ was accomplished, but that… didn’t happen? It was weird. It mostly consisted of Hallie stumbling through her Anomaly, ending up in a different period, bumbling around trying not to get in trouble, with the chronometrist taunting her now and then. It tied up in the end, yet I never got rid of the feeling that plot-wise, the book was plodding rather than making progress.
Character-wise, too, I believe that time spent on stumbling around was meant for character development, but in the end, I didn’t get that much of a feel for Hallie and the people around her, and they end up rather boring to me.
Now, to be fair, I really liked the way the novel approached solutions to ‘prevent a person from being born’. In a lot of time travel stories, the usual approach is to kill them (the Sarah Connor effect), which obviously raises its lot of ethical questions. Here, Hallie found (well, was pushed to) other ways, and that was refreshing to see.
Interesting slant on time travel. Well written with an interesting choice of eras with an ethereal time anomaly and a warning of the consequences of messing with past and future events. I liked the character of Haille but would have liked a little more information about her episodes before she arrived in Paris.. I felt there was more to that than was hinted at in the book. The other characters were well rounded and the chronometrist was slightly creepy. Time travel can be a minefield full of pitfalls when used as a plot line and I think the author did extremely well fusing it all together. The cover was amazing which is what caught my attention first. I would certainly recommend this to people who appreciate this genre. Interested to see what the author tackles next