It was a long time since I´ve read a romantic novel, and the reason has less to do with an eventual decrease of interest on my side in romantic inspiration, but rather due to a relatively ´serious´ neverending reading list. But a love story burgeoning in Paris cannot be skipped therefore, this week I took a couple of hours break from my heavy thinking and enjoyed a long late summer evening in the company of Uncoupling/Paris connection by Lorraine Brown.
Hannah and Si - short for Simon - are on their way back from Venice to Amsterdam, to attend Catherine´s - Si´s sister - glamorous wedding. They are together for a while and things looks to go in the right, committed direction. As Hannah is falling asleep in a different part of the train and missed her connection, she ends up in Paris with a couple of hours before her delayed connection to Amsterdam, with a handsome French Léo as her companion. In around 10 hours, she is showed around the beautiful city, get to know Léo's friends and even is revealed some unpleasant truths about her boyfriend.
Once being back together in Amsterdam though, there is even more suspense added to their story as it seems that all the cards of their carefully built love story are falling apart.
Personally, I loved the idea of the romance, of two strangers, left together by fate for a couple of hours and - relatively predictable - the way of getting to know and probably develop some feelings for each other. The hint of mystery and unknown in Hannah´s relationship as well as the possible romantic development with someone else do make the reading suspenseful. I also resonate the ending as it does not promise anything and avoids a sugary unexpected development.
However, there are some parts of the book that did not come into the right pieces for me and they mostly had to do with the timeline. For me, it took an eternity to fit all the many events that happened in around half a day. I am a very fast traveller and it happens to know Paris as well, thus I dare to think that the timeline is highly overrated. Half of the events would have made the story more realistic especially when not all the events added do really matter for the further advancing of the narrative.
Despite those shortcomings. Uncoupling shares an useful relationship intelligence, through relatable, well built characters. And when it involves France and Paris, one can never get completely wrong, I hope.
Plus, I also see this book as a movie. A Romantic movie, obviously.
Rating: 3 stars
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