One Night in Paris lured me into its clutches because it had “Paris” in the title.

It looked like a nice stand-alone romance novella with which I could while away the hours that I spend in grocery store lines.

I was mistaken.

Reader, this is no moon!

The call is coming from inside the house!

Run for your lives!

Run for it, Marty!

While this review is listed as DNF, “Did Not Finish,” please know that I would finish the book if I could do so, and in fact would love to find out all the answers to my questions. But in this case, because I cannot finish it, I’m listing it as DNF. Read on for more details!

The novella itself is fine. Bella is wary of getting into a relationship. She’s also a little rocked about her upcoming fortieth birthday. She travels for work all the time. When she’s sent to Paris during her birthday weekend, she invites her smoking hot neighbor, Andre, to come along for one night of crazy sex. Cue romance and some adorableness.

There’s a lot of conspicuous consumption in the story, and I know mileage varies on that – even my own mileage. Sometimes I find conspicuous consumption to be repellent and other times I’m happy living vicariously at an incredibly fancy hotel, eating crepes, and receiving flowers by the dozen, while in reality our sewer pipe broke and I would have given anything for a fancy hotel or even a working toilet (it’s fixed now).

I found the novella to be light, escapist, and generally enjoyable. There’s too much emphasis on Andre being younger than Bella, and I found his behavior off-putting, though Bella did not. For example, she likes it when he puts his hand on her back to steer her through a door. Any guy who tries to steer me through a door with his hand will never use that hand again. Otherwise, it’s a nice story about beautiful, rich people giving each other fancy presents, eating fabulous food, and having great sex in a romantic location. That’s the whole plot.

The startling thing is that when you reach the end of the novella, it just…ends. It turns out that it’s the first installment of a four part series.

OK, I can roll with this.

But then I ran into real problems.

It turns out that the fourth book is no longer published.

You may have noticed that so far, I’ve written a short but standard review. I don’t know how to grade One Night in Paris, because it doesn’t really end. It’s not earth-shaking, but it’s enjoyable.

And then the trouble begins.

The novellas that follow are crammed with plot. So much plot. It’s as though a travel commercial suddenly turned into a telenovela. And it still doesn’t end.

Dear Bitches, I am going to try to explain what happens in the subsequent novellas for you, because what happens escalates to such a ridiculous degree that I just have to tell you about it. In order to discuss, I must spoil, so please, proceed with caution.

While this review is listed as DNF, “Did Not Finish,” please know that I would finish the book if I could do so, and in fact would love to find out all the answers to my questions. But in this case, because I cannot finish it, I’m listing it as DNF.

 

 

 

 

 

SPOILERS AHEAD.

 

 

 

 

 

SO MANY SPOILERS.

 

 

 

 

 

NOT EVEN KIDDING.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DO NOT SAY YOU WERE NOT WARNED, OKAY?

 

 

 

One Night in London

This novella picks up exactly where the last one left off. Bella goes home to D.C. but isn’t prepared for Andre to be part of her real life, so Bella does bizarre and random things to create conflict in a story which should by all rights be conflict free (two hot single people fall in love and get along great – not much conflict there).

Bella doesn’t want the neighbors or her friends to know about her and Andre. Her friends Vivica and Holly mention that tabloids report that Andre is back together with his ex, Clarissa. Bella says “No way” and talks to Andre who says, “No way, also, let’s make out” and then Clarissa rings the doorbell at Bella’s place and wants to talk to Andre right away.

Well.

Four thousand phone calls later, Andre explains that Clarissa is mad because when she was dating Andre, she was invited to a wedding in London that he was attending. Now that they broke up, Clarissa’s not invited because she didn’t actually know the bride or groom. Andre and Bella jet off first class to London and there is hotel scenery porn. Guess who shows up to crash the wedding! You’ll never guess!

Yes, you guessed correctly – it’s Clarissa.

The next pages have a ton of clothing-based slut shaming. Clarissa wears tight, skimpy clothes. She also wears white to the wedding despite the fact that she’s not invited to the wedding, nor is she the bride. Even I think that’s tacky, and my fashion sense extends as far as regularly shopping in my pajamas. On at least one occasion, the pajamas were inside out. So when I say something was a “fashion faux pas,” that’s really saying something.

At the reception, a scantily-clad Clarissa endeavors to climb Andre like a tree, while Andre makes it clear in every possible way other than skywriting that he does not want to get back together with Clarissa, not now, not ever, not under any circumstances. Andre and Bella have lots of great sex, once without a condom. Bella frets over being probably infertile because she hasn’t been able to get pregnant before and now she’s forty. As Bella is leaving the hotel to go back to D.C., Clarissa shows up as the limo arrives and announces…you’ll never guess…

Oh my goodness, you guessed right again!

Clarissa says she’s pregnant! End of novella! What a cliffhanger! Let us proceed to:

One More Night With You

The last available story is longer than the others, so I’m going to say it’s a book although it’s still pretty short. Brace yourself. Things are about to escalate. Terrible fashion choices ahead.

Again, this book starts right where the other one left off. Bella is sad. Bella thinks that if she continues to be involved with Andre it will drive a wedge between him and the mother of his child and his baby, possibly because Bella has never heard the term “blended family.” Bella ignores the fact that there’s already a wedge between Andre and Clar, consisting of the fact that Clarissa is evil and Andre hates her. I admire Bella’s realization that babies come first, but I don’t see the problem with Bella being in the picture. Just as she has before, Bella comes up with ideas purely so that the story can have conflict.

Just to be clear, at no point does Clarissa have layers. She’s the object of slut-shaming and vilification. She’s written as a pure villain, so even if you find slut-shaming to be problematic, and I hope you do, too, you still won’t feel sorry for Clarissa.

Meanwhile, remember Bella’s friends, Holly and Vivica? Holly’s husband (Mike) wants a divorce so that he can marry his secretary. What an asshole. Holly is bitter and also literally murderous. Bella has to go to Holly’s house to keep her from stabbing her ex, who is taking stuff “he bought” out of the house. Again – such an asshole. Vivica finally calms Holly down by giving her an antidepressant, which immediately mellows her out. As someone who is actually on antidepressants (two kinds!) I can tell you that antidepressants don’t necessarily work that way. I should be so lucky.

Andre gets slightly stalkery because Bella won’t talk to him. Bella remains idiotic. Clarissa confronts Bella and is all “Stay away from my man!” and Bella is all, “Fine! Whatever!”

The ladies go out to party and Holly gets very drunk and leaves with some guy even though her friends try to stop her. (This does not end in the terrible way that I thought it would.) Later Holly confesses to her pals that while drunk she sent revenge porn to Mike’s coworkers. Bella and Vivica are all, “That was not cool. You must chill.”

Bella goes out on a date with a guy even though Vivica points out that Bella has been back from London, and broken up with Andre, for THREE DAYS.

That’s right – attempted murder, revenge porn, an enormous amount of alcohol consumption, and pregnancy drama have all happened within a three-day period. No wonder everyone is tired. The guy that Bella goes out with, Dexter, is super sweet and figures out that Bella is bearing a torch for someone else. He is so gracious about it. Call me, Dexter.

Andre runs over to Bella’s house (remember, they are neighbors). He saw Dexter leaving Bella’s place! How can Bella have a new boyfriend after 3 days? Bella explains that she does not have a new boyfriend, which leaves Dexter available for me! Bella and Andre have wild, torrid sex all night. They say the L word to each other for the first time. They have a common sense conversation in which Bella says she wants to stay with Andre but if Clarissa is really pregnant with his baby he needs to be that baby’s dad. Andre is all, “Duh, who do you take me for? Let me explain about blended families.” He leaves, AND THEN…

Clarissa shows up!

She has clearly been watching Fatal Attraction and taking careful notes in a color-coded binder. Bella says, “If you’re so pregnant, let me see your tummy” and Clarissa says, “Hell no” which, to be fair, is what I would have said, too. Bella hires a private investigator to find out whether or not Clarissa is actually pregnant! Clarissa vandalizes Bella’s house! The PI has proof that Clarissa is not pregnant after all! Clarissa shows up at Bella’s house and attacks her! Clarissa stabs Bella in the chest and hits her in the head with a handy tchotchke! All goes black! THE END!

The next book, If This is Our Last Night, was supposed to wrap everything up – but it is no longer published.

No longer published?!  What do I do now?!

HAS ANYONE READ IT? What happens?

Does Bella bleed out?

Does Holly murder her husband, and/or go to jail for sending revenge porn to her husband’s workplace?

Does Vivica finally get tired of being the only calm person in the story and go backpacking in a quiet, remote location?

Does Andre swear off women?

Does Dexter call me?

Only you can tell me, Dear Readers. I am in your hands.