Book Review: The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

The Little Paris Bookshop Summary

“There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies – I mean books – that were written for one person only… A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.”

Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls.

The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story.

Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

Internationally bestselling and filled with warmth and adventure, 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.

The Little Paris Bookshop Review

The Little Paris Bookshop is the story of Jean Perdu, a French bookseller with a unique talent for telling his customers exactly what book they need to ‘cure’ them.

Running his floating bookstore on a barge on the Seine in Paris, Perdu lives a monotonous life that has lost its colour.

When he is forced to read a long-forgotten and unopened letter from a former lover, Perdu resolves to fight the demons of his past and find a way to move forwards in life.

Keep reading for The Little Paris Bookshop review… 

This is more than just a story of long lost love. It is a story of friendship, discovering yourself, healing old wounds and, most of all, learning to love again.

I am not the type to fold down the corners of pages or scribble in my books – you won’t be able to tell which books are new and which have been read on my shelves!

However, for The Little Paris Bookshop, I pulled out a pack of sticky labels and started bookmarking my favourite pages.

This book is full of beautiful quotes that really spoke to me and I imagine a lot of other readers felt the same way.

Nina George has an amazing way of pinpointing exactly why I love to read and why love can sometimes be so painful. She captures what it is to be heartbroken, to mourn, to be lost and her writing can mend broken hearts.

I truly wish that characters like Jean Perdu existed as I’m sure the world would be a much better place. If only somebody could tell me exactly what book I needed every time I entered a bookstore! How much time I would save…

Perdu is a simple man that you cannot help but fall in love with from the beginning. Not in a romantic way, but in the way you become very fond of someone unique.

When we first meet him, he seems to have given up on finding new opportunities in life and is merely whiling the rest of the his life away. After all, Perdu means ‘lost’ in French!

Then, he finds purpose again and becomes a man on a quest, a man searching for what has been missing from his life for the past 20 years.

The Little Paris Bookshop is a story of self-discovery and you’re rooting for Perdu the whole time, praying he finds the peace he deserves. It is not often that I find characters I would truly like to meet and spend time with in real life, but Jean Perdu is definitely one of them.

When I first started reading this The Little Paris Bookshop, I was convinced that it was going to become my new favourite book. Having finished it, I’d still rank it pretty highly amongst all the books I’ve ever read.

However I couldn’t help but feel a burgeoning sense of disappointment as I delved deeper into this book. I don’t want to give any of this book’s secrets away but the love story wasn’t at all what I was expecting and some of the actions of a certain character were downright immoral.

My problem with this character was that their actions were not really punished by the author, though, to be fair, they were not condoned either.

This was the only flaw of the novel I found with the novel but it did mean that I was left feeling incredibly frustrated around the middle passages. This is a real shame as both the beginning and the end contain some really beautiful passages of writing.

In the end, this book didn’t turn out to be the story I expected it to be at all. If you think that Jean Perdu hops on his barge and sails off in his floating literary apothecary to find his long lost lover, then you would be wrong.

It is rare that a book of this genre surprises me but I don’t think anyone could predict the plot of The Little Paris Bookshop before reading it. This is now my all-time favourite book set in Paris and I’d highly recommend it! 

Have you read The Little Paris Bookshop? If so, what did you think of it?

Buy The Little Paris Bookshop

If you liked this post, check out these:
Best Books Set in Paris
The Best French Novels and Classics
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Books Like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Laura

Founder & Editor of What’s Hot?

Laura is an award-winning travel and book blogger based in the UK. She studied French literature at Oxford University and is now an IP lawyer at a top law firm in London. She was named UK Book Blogger of the Year in 2019 and loves to combine her passion for books and travel with literary travel.