The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

This one brought to mind a book I loved when I read it back in 2013, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Both are the stories of someone hurting and leaving their life behind with pretty much the clothes on their back and setting off on what turns into an amazing journey of self-discovery and healing.


It is lines like this, a message meant to be absorbed and a point touched upon a number of times in the story, "The trouble is that so many people, most of them women, think they have to have a perfect body be loved. But all is has to do is be capable of loving-and being loved."

The Little Paris Bookshop is a barge that Jean Perdu has turned into an apothecary of books. He can tell by asking people about themselves what kind of book they need to help them heal or move on or find peace. The only person he isn't helping is himself. He has closed off a room in his home and the room in heart. Until something happens to crack the door open a little....and he flees...on an adventure to find his lost love and past and to defrost his heart and find life and see if he can live it. Along the way he hurts, loves, grows, laughs, and cries. And I laughed and loved and cried with him.

I will be honest, my love of this book grew as I read it. I wasn't sure at first how I would end up liking it. It was a slow burn. But all of a sudden I realized I was fully invested and wanting to know how Jean and his friends would end up, where they would end up, and I fell in love with them all and their world.

Nina George writes in such a lovely way, I could feel and see the France she wrote about.

I found this read on the Buy 2 Get 1 Free table at Barnes & Noble (you know how much I love and hate that table) and I grabbed it at first thinking it was something else, but when I realized I had the wrong title in mind I had already read the back and had to have it because it says "The Little Paris Bookshop is a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives." AND THAT IS ME FOR SURE!!!!!

(Finished February 10, 2018)