Thank you to the author and BookBuzz for the free copy. Full disclosure that may affect my review: This is the second book and I did not read the first.

Because I didn't read the first book, I think it took me a little while to sort out all of the characters and what was going on. About halfway through I was finally following along but there is no mystery in the plot line. It's fairly predictable and the culprits of the various crimes are obvious.

The secondary title "a novel of Paris with murders" is suiting. The book does a lovely job of immersing you in Paris during this time period. And a bunch of murders happen, as I said with little mystery to them. I also kind of wanted more closure with many of the storylines. I would even maybe argue there were too many storylines going on for such a short book. You couldn't really delve into any one of them.

I enjoyed the varied characters and the incorporation of historical elements. My biggest disappointment though was not truly understanding the relationship between Theo and Michel. Maybe this was also hindered by not having read the first book, but I didn't really see why they loved each other and it was very anti-climatic at the end to just have her guess that he did.