Lost and Found in Paris
A Novel
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4.2 • 66 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
“Fast-paced and colorful, with hints of The Goldfinch and Malibu Rising, and more than one pitch-perfect love story—Lost and Found in Paris sparkles like the City of Light itself and will have you flipping the pages quickly as you’re drawn deeply into its mysterious world of art, intrigue, and redemption.” —Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names
The ultimate escapist adventure in Paris, told with wit, style, and a touch of intrigue, by the popular and dynamic author of The Sweeney Sisters.
Joan Blakely had an unconventional childhood: the daughter of a globe-trotting supermodel and a world-famous artist. Her artist father died on 9/11, and Joan—an art historian by training—has spent more than a decade maintaining his legacy. Life in the art world is beginning to wear on her—and then one fateful afternoon her husband drops a bombshell: he’s fathered twins with another woman.
Furious but secretly pleased to have a reason to blow up her life, Joan impulsively decides to get out of town, booking a last-minute trip to Paris as an art courier: the person museums hire to fly valuable works of art to potential clients, discreetly stowed in their carry-on luggage. Sipping her champagne in business-class, she chats up her seatmate, Nate, a good-looking tech nerd who invites her to dinner in Paris. He doesn’t know she’s carrying drawings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But after a romantic dinner and an even more romantic night together, Joan wakes up next to her new lover to discover the drawings gone. Even more shocking is what’s been left in their place: a sketch from her father’s journals, which she thought had been lost when he died on 9/11, and a poem that reads like a treasure hunt.
With Nate as a sidekick, Joan will follow the clues all over Paris—from its grand cathedrals to the romantic bistros to the twisty side streets of Montmartre—hoping to recover the lost art, and her own sense of adventure. What she finds is even better than she’d expected.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dolan's clever latest (after The Sweeney Sisters) follows a newly single art courier as she ends up on a scavenger hunt after losing the work in her care. After Joan Blakely's social-climbing husband, Casey, reveals he's fathered twins with his former assistant, Joan accepts an assignment to deliver a series of sketches by a 19th-century French painter depicting Joan of Arc from a Pasadena, Calif., museum to a collector in Paris. The obscure works are meaningful to Joan, whose namesake was revered and often referenced by her late father, Henry, a famous artist who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Joan meets smart, thoughtful Nate on the flight to Paris, and later, in an attempt to forget about Casey, she hooks up with him. The morning after, she discovers the sketches are missing from her hotel room safe. Joan grills Nate about the theft and determines he wasn't the culprit. Then, envelopes appear that contain elaborate clues along with a page from Henry's priceless notebooks, long thought to be lost in the plane that crashed into the North Tower. Dolan successfully sells most, but not all, of the far-fetched reasons for the mystery of the envelopes, and does a fantastic job depicting Joan's love for her father and heartache over his death. This has a bit more substance than the standard Parisian romp.
Customer Reviews
Loved it!
Not what I expected at all. Thinking I was launching into a ROMCOM I was surprised to embark on a grand adventure….part romance, part mystery. We’ll written and intelligent.
Great read
I loved this book. The storyline was unexpected and engaging! What a joy to read.
Loved this book!!!
I couldn’t put this book down! A heartwarming story with a beautiful depth. Plus I loved the shout outs to favorite places in Pasadena and Paris!