It's Not Love, It's Just Paris
A Novel
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3.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A spellbinding story of a young American abroad and a star-crossed relationship: “This is a novel to get lost in.” —The Miami Herald
Lita del Cielo is the daughter of two Colombian immigrants who arrived in America with nothing and made a fortune with their Latin food empire. Now Lita has been granted one year to pursue her studies in Paris before returning to work in the family business. She moves into a crumbling Left Bank mansion known as “The House of Stars,” where the spirited but bedridden Countess Séraphine rents out rooms to young women visiting Paris to work, to study, and, unofficially, to find love.
Cautious and guarded, Lita keeps a cool distance from the other girls, who seem at once boldly adult and impulsively naïve, who both intimidate and fascinate her. Then Lita meets Cato, and the contours of her world shift. Charming, enigmatic, and weak with illness, Cato is the son of a notorious right-wing politician. As Cato and Lita retreat to their own world, they soon find it difficult to keep the outside world from closing in on theirs. Ultimately Lita must decide whether to stay in France with Cato or return home to fulfill her family’s dreams for her future.
From the author of Vida, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris is a love story, a portrait of a Paris caught between the old world and the new, and an exploration of one woman’s journey to lay claim to her own life.
“Wise and accomplished . . . Beautifully written.” —The New York Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like all the girls who live at the decaying mansion nicknamed the House of Stars, 20-year-old Lita Del Cielo has come to Paris for adventure. But she's also different from her fellow "greenbloods," less interested in shopping and sleeping around than in living a "fluid, creative life." Engel (Vida) has a knack for showing how Paris's charms are both real and always verging on clich ; the house's ancient, noble owner and Lita's fellow residents, all full of advice, make for fun reading; and the story of Lita's parents' journey from poverty in Colombia to running a giant Latin American food distribution company in New Jersey has an appealing fairy tale quality. But what's meant to be the story's heart is Lita's love affair with Cato, who is debilitated by the remnants of a childhood illness and is the son of one of France's most notoriously anti-immigrant politicians. Despite (or perhaps because of) these difficulties, they fall in love. The problem is that it's never fully clear why. For all Lita's insistence that this is true love, readers may agree with the wised-up housemate who tells Lita that no matter how different she and Cato think they are, their romance is just another short-term affair between a resident of the House of Stars and her local boyfriend.
