I didn't think this book lived up to all the hype - I found it mediocre and rather tedious. Will not be recommending it.

I think for me this book suffered under my expectations. I thought it was fun, I enjoyed the Paris setting, but overall this one just was not for me. I wish it was! I will continue to read from this author for sure, but this wasn't it for me.

The Paris Apartment has Jess, who is heading to her half brother Ben's apartment in Paris to get away from her old job.  Jess and Ben aren't close so whilst he wasn't jumping for joy at her coming, he is letting her stay there.  Except he's not around when she arrives.

As he stays missing, Jess gets more worried, and starts to discover things that make her wonder what's going on!

This is a good thriller, set in a place that makes you feel like an outsider as much as possible.

This is the third book I've ready by Lucy Foley, and they've all been very good thrillers, with interesting set ups and all based in very different places.

The Paris Apartment was published on 3rd March 2022, and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.

You can follow Lucy Foley on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

You can read my review of The Guest List by Lucy Foley here.

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, and so my thanks to NetGalley, and to HarperCollins for this book.

I enjoyed The Hunting Party and the Guest List but The Paris Apartment lacked the elements of the other two novels. A confusing story, thinly written characters and although set in Paris could have been any major European city. I will read other novels by the author. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

Foley's strength as a writer is capturing a sense of place, as she did in her previous books The Hunting Party and The Guest List. Here, this contemporary mystery is set in a classic old building in Paris complete with an oddball cast and a missing brother.

The story is told through a variety of characters, each using the first-person narrative. Each has their own secret and paranoia, but often their voices is too similar to the other characters so sometimes it's easy to forget who is narrating. It is particularly the case as most of them are in love with the missing man and the flashbacks detail gazing and lusting after him. The designer name dropping doesn't work for me or readers who are not followers of the latest craze or trend. Equally distracting are the frequent random French words, which are totally unnecessary as the whole book, being set in France, would have the characters speaking French anyway.

This book is modern in style with current phrases littered throughout, despite the traditional mystery trope that has drawn comparisons to Agatha Christie murder mysteries. There are no likable characters but they all have a sadness and tension within them. The tale ambles along, uneventful until the very end.

​Lucy Foley is a popular author and I'm sure she will continue her success with this novel.

Lucy Foley has done it again! I loved this book. I am a big fan from The Hunting Party to the Guest List. This is the perfect setting, makes me want to go to Paris. It's thrilling and mysterious. I could have read this in one sitting but I had to be an adult and so some work.

I absolutely loved this novel.
I was completely transported to the building, having been to Paris a few times it felt very familiar.
I didn’t know what to expect as I flew through the pages but it was a true thriller.

Dark and creepy with a whole bunch of strange and unlikeable people. I liked Jess who has the unenviable task of living with these horrible people in order to find out what happened to her brother, Ben.
This slow-burn story is twisty and complicated. It jumps back and forth between timelines and points of view of different characters.
I listened to the audiobook and I loved the ensemble cast narration.
I enjoyed The Paris Apartment but it's slightly darker and uglier than I would normally enjoy and I found myself needing to shake it off after I'd finished it.

💓 The character development was fantastic and I loved ALL of the characters (even the ones we’re suppose to loathe 😂)
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😬 The build up of suspense was intense! We’re left constantly wondering who gets killed, why and by who 🕵🏻‍♀️ .. so many have motive 😳 I loved finding out about all the back stories as we try to uncover the mystery 🕵🏻‍♀️
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😬 My heart was racing with each page, and I loved all the twists, just SO MANY twists.
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🖤 An addictive, domestic, suspensy, whodunnit that you won’t want to miss. And if you enjoyed the hunting party - this is WAYYY better 🤣 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I love Lucy Foley’s books and this one didn’t disappoint. It felt refreshingly different to the first two which were quite similar in tone and plot. This setting was brilliant, the story cleverly crafted and I was really invested in the characters. More please!

When Jess arrives in Paris to stay with her brother, Ben, he’s nowhere to be seen. Managing to get into his apartment, she finds his wallet and clothes, but no sign of Ben. As she meets his neighbours, they all seem to have something to hide, but is it connected to Ben’s disappearance?

The Paris Apartment is another classic from Lucy Foley, keeping the reader guessing right to the end. Just as I thought I knew what had happened, she threw a huge curveball into the mix! It was slightly confusing with so many different character perspectives, but a cracking read nontheless.

The premise of this book had me expecting to be transported to Paris, with a mystery full of intrigue and enigmatic characters. Unfortunately, it ended up being a miss for me. The book starts off with the main character Jess visiting her brother, Ben, but he's nowhere to be found. Her reaction? Ignore every suspicious clue. When she eventually twigged that something could be wrong, she didn't call the police but instead tries to investigate. But her way of investigating is stumbling around everywhere and getting interested in the men she meets. I just found it frustrating, because there was no urgency to her actions. If Ben is actually in danger, she doesn't seem to care that much.

The other characters are thinly sketched, and the mystery itself takes a turn that wasn't fully explored. While I appreciate the book's attempt to highlight real social issues, the way it was presented wasn't good. There's a family in the middle of the story that acted so villainous that it was hard to believe they were real people. The positive here is that the chapters are short and the twists are outlandish enough to keep me interested.

Jess has not seen her journalist half-brother for a while, so when she needs to escape a tricky situation at home, she takes him up on his open invitation to stay with him in the Paris apartment of the title. However, when she arrives, he is nowhere to be found, and the other residents of the apartment block are not very forthcoming with any information. Jess is convinced that he has not gone missing of his own accord, and begins to investigate for herself, ruffling a few feathers in the process. Moreover, it quickly becomes clear that she is not sure who she can trust, not even the French police or Ben’s editor….
Told from multiple viewpoints, this novel is a fast-paced and exciting take on a whodunit, with most of the action taking place in the apartments of this strangely insular mansion and the mystery unravelling little by little as the characters reveal more about themselves. Everyone seems to have something to hide – including Jess. A totally absorbing and entertaining read which I have been recommending unreservedly to fellow bookworms.

Content warnings: sexual abuse, drugs, suicide, sex work.

Sadly, I am really disappointed with this one. I absolutely loved The Hunting Party and was expecting The Paris Apartment to completely blow me away, even more so, but sadly it all just fell a bit flat for me.

Yes, this book is extremely dramatic, there's twists and turns on every page (which I know is what a good thriller is meant to have), but, it just got a bit too much? A bit repetitive maybe? I just don't feel like the story flowed as well as it could have done, there wasn't really a STORY to it?

I liked Jess, her character was interesting and compelling at times. The other characters weren't compelling in any way, shape, or form and their development just wasn't it. I did like the occasional input from the concierge though, I wish we heard more from her POV. The setting had SO much potential being in Paris, but we were basically stuck in some basic apartment building which could have been in Timbuktu for all we knew.

I think this book lacked the excitement I was expecting after The Hunting Party and my expectations may have been too high. Sadly, it just wasn't for me!

This is a really dark mystery. It is not fast paced but really well paced. Jess, a dysfunctional but extremely likeable character, arrives as a stranger in Paris to stay with her rather reluctant half brother Ben. Problem is Ben is not there when she arrives. Using her rather questionable skills of breaking and entering Jess gains access to Ben’s apartment. We know from the very beginning that something sinister has happened to Ben but why and what. Jess starts to investigate but out of a cast of very weird characters who can she trust?

I enjoyed that this book was written from various points of view both in the present and the past. That for me filled in the background and made everyone come to life and added to the tension. When we finally find out what happened to Ben it is a shock and there is a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming.

Not a five star read but a definite four stars from me.

It took me a few attempts before I could make it past the first few chapters of this book as I could not get invested in the mystery or any of the characters. However, once I pushed through those first couple of chapters and became more familiar with the surroundings and the characters, I did find myself more invested in this story
I have read Lucy Foley's previous book 'The Guest List' and I did enjoy that one as it was incredibly fast paced. Even after a year, I still remember a lot of the plot of that book, but I could not tell you a single character's name as they were not very memorable. Similarly, the characters in this book were not very memorable. I finished this book a few weeks ago and I cannot remember a single character's name but the plot was very memorable.
Whilst this wasn't as fast paced as her previous work, I was hooked throughout most of the story but I did feel like this book needed editing down a little as I was incredible bored halfway through but I am glad I pushed through in order to get to the mystery of what happened at the beginning or the book and to be able to unravel the mystery of the characters.
I did enjoy the plot twists in this book. They were not the most exciting plot twists I have ever read but I definitely enjoyed them and did not predict some of them.
Overall, I did like this book. I don't know if I will pick up another Lucy Foley book in the future, it might depend on what her next book is about, as the two I have read have not wowed me.
I do really love the cover of this book and it was one of the main reasons why I picked it up, as well as really loving the premise of a mystery book set in Paris.

Absolutely fantastic! She’s done it again. This is an author who is very fast becoming one of my go tos when I need a gripping book. The characters are intriguing the twist is something you would never ever think of in a million years wow

I liked the premise for this and enjoyed some of the sections of the book, but overall, I found the characters to be annoying and the plot felt quite slow and I really missed Lucy Foley’s incredible tension she had for The Hunting Party and The Guest List. I have honestly loved her other work, so whilst I found a couple of things to like about this, I sadly wasn’t captivated by this one and drawn in. Just 3 stars for me this times but I’ll definitely be there for more of her work, as I have loved her past books!!

Having loving the guest list by Lucy foley I was so excited for the latest novel to be released by the author. Sadly for me personally I just couldn’t get into the Paris apartment while reading it.

when I tell you I GASPED!

ugh can lucy foley do any wrong? I will literally inhale anything she writes. this book felt v different from her previous two as foley breaks away from portraying friend group dynamics and instead writes about a girl on the hunt for her missing brother in a (no offence to paris, love the place) spooky af setting. think du maurier's don't look now!

I love how foley uses landscape to heighten tension! we saw it in the hunting party with the scottish highlands, we saw it in the guest list with the crashing waves at the aran islands and now we see a grimy seedy city underbelly! honestly, I think I prefer the other two because I love the claustrophia involved but this one was still class and foley took on a lot more in terms of theme.

really recommend if you want a twisty tale ☁️