REVIEW: CJ Duggan’s ‘Paris Lights’

 

Paris Lights
C.J. Duggan

It was the opening lines to CJ Duggan’s Paris Lights hooked me immediately:
I genuinely believe that aside from your place of birth there is somewhere else you belong: a place you’re guided to by your heart. Some people might spend their entire lives in search of such a place, but all my life, throughout my travels, I knew which place was waiting for me. Paris.

Australian-born Claire Shorten had always dreamed of Paris; living there, loving there, and soaking up all that life had to offer there. An idea perfect in theory but when she’s unceremoniously dumped beneath the Eiffel Tower, her plans go the way of many before her…

Not one to give up on her dream, Claire decides to stay in Paris working in a hotel that is under threat of being demolished by a celebrity chef/reality television program who also just happens to catch Claire’s eye and perhaps a little more of her heart than she’d counted on.

Duggan has done a great job with the fact that Claire falls into a relationship reasonably quickly after the disastrous end to her previous one. I was a little concerned that the possibility of a ‘rebound’ relationship but shouldn’t have been. The Parisian landscape is worked into the story beautifully and certainly adds to the storytelling.

A lovely story that certainly sets a strong precedent for the following stories in the series.