Jacqueline in Paris
Grade : B+

In Jacqueline in Paris, you will not encounter the sophisticate who sparked a passion for style and grace from the White House, the world’s most famous widow, nor the woman who married Aristotle Onassis and later forged a life for herself in New York City. Instead, Ann Mah introduces readers to a different sort of Jacqueline Bouvier, a twenty-year-old who’s still blossoming and learning how to be. The portrait is entertaining, though parts of it feel a little routine.

The novel peers into the time that Jackie lived in Paris for a month during her junior year at Vassar College in 1949. Young, filled with vim and vigor and yet still a shade less sophisticated than she would become, she runs face-first into a Paris broiling under the late summer sun and still suffering from the German occupation. Jackie takes up nightclubbing and sightseeing, freed from the strictures of life in Vassar. She even lands a romance with a young writer named John Marquand Jr. (another Jack!) who is the son of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.

But Jackie’s love for Marquand will not last. What does last is the mystery of the de Renty family, a mother and her two daughters, minor nobility who have taken up Jackie and two of her classmates. Soon, Jackie will learn about the tragedy that happened to them during the war, find herself embroiled in a spy ring, and learn much about Communism – and begin to discover her own political point of view.

Jacqueline in Paris is a perfectly nice interpretation of Jackie’s early life and of her developing love of Paris, where she would return numerous times during her life. The city during this period comes alive under Mah’s pen, which is judicial but truthful in bringing Jackie’s world to life.

As this is historical fiction rather than biography, there are, of course, inventions, but there’s a wonderful sense of liveliness about the proceedings, and the book does draw you in with flashes of romantic intrigue and surprising derring do.

The research applied here is excellent, and the period feeling is pretty flawless, too. The only real problem I have with it is the feeling that I’ve seen it all before in other books about Jackie. But the end result is still quite readable. It’s not my favorite fictionalization of Jackie’s life, but Jacqueline in Paris is still a solid read.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible or your local independent retailer

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Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes
Grade : B+

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date : October 7, 2022

Publication Date: 09/2022

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Lisa Fernandes

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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