The Paris Affair: A brand new unforgettable and emotional historical novel

Product Information

The Paris Affair is narrated in first person by Harper. This is a narration style I don't usually enjoy as the narrator is quite often unreliable. I am only getting Harper's POV but it is clear by the way she talks that she knows this and doesn't care whether you believe her...or even like her. Which made me like her even more. Melanie Hudson is an English author of classics, romance and fiction books. She’s worked as speech-language pathologist for more than 30 years in private, public schools and universities. Melanie became a published author in 2012 The Wedding Cake Tree was published. I was absolutely hooked with The Paris Affair, what an intriguing thriller, you won’t want to put this one down until the end! The author has nailed it! Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. Nurse Edith Cavell, on the eve of her execution, 1915

Rosie goes through many incidents that leave her heartbroken. She faces the horror of the war and struggles as she is among the few women living in the camp. Even though the letters between the two ladies were brief, they contain a lot of information about the two women. The letters make the book easy to read and chatty. The first letter Aggie writes to Rosie shows something magical about their second chance of friendship and makes realize that their relationship ended on bad terms. Hudson's characters are multidimensional - ones I’d like to meet and spend time with in real life. I loved Dame Sibyl Hathaway and found myself smiling when reading about her bravery, leadership and determination when facing the Nazis, reacting to Churchill’s decision, or rallying her fiefdom to work together. She truly was dynamic. I found myself cheering for the star-crossed lovers and for Dame Sibyl and Sophie who faced vast odds. In crafting her characters, Hudson raises the question - who are we really? - and allows us time and space to contemplate Dr. Sebastian Braun, Sascha Braun, Sophie Hathaway, Juliette Vernier, and Christoph Wagner. Who really were they?The author’s writing in The Paris Affair has surpassed itself, with prose and ideas that touch the reader deeply, making it a brilliant read for many reasons. The main character, Sebastian, is unique for the genre and time period, and his story is narrated from a first-person perspective, allowing the reader to become his advocate. Sebastian is a German veteran of WWI who has made a new life for himself on the island of Sark, where he tends his garden and wants nothing to do with the new war. The story takes place during WWII, with Sebastian telling his life story to a prison priest as he awaits execution. The best thing one can do when the chips are down is focus on helping someone else - or something else. It wards off melancholy.” The Paris Affair is a brilliant read for many reasons - Melanie’s books just keep getting better and better! Her writing has gone to the next level with prose and ideas that really touched me. I was swept away by her research told through a main character that was so unique for this genre and time. Considering she’s under pressure from her editor and having to deal with a very competitive colleague, she is quite clever, innovative and resourceful, although she has a poor grasp of the correct use of personal pronouns considering she is meant to be a writer, but perhaps this is a common trait for those below a certain age.

The last third, what Sebastian ends up doing in Paris wasn't predictable but it also wasn't focused on too well. He must pretend to be his twin brother and so much of what should be harrowing and tense was glossed over in favor of the central romance. I would have preferred a bit more suspense here. I saw Sascha's, his brother, twist a mile off but I wasn't mad about that. How exactly Sebastian's time in prison climaxes was a perfect twist, I loved it and I loved that an object that is mentioned so much wasn't just a subject to fill the word count, there is a purpose to the heirloom. Two days later, having learned his identity, she invites herself to a party at his place to learn more. But while there she is filmed, with Noah, by one of his life models and arts student Sabine. Soon she realises that she may have made a mistake that will cost her her career. It turns out that Noah is married to a very well connected doyen of the Paris art world who is older than Noah. And soon after that Sabine is found dead in similar circumstances to another dead girl a few weeks ago. Harper really wants to write this story! She thinks she knows what happened but does she really?An interesting sidebar to the story is the attitude of the French police to missing persons: “in France, the police won’t search for you unless there are clear signs of foul play or you’re a minor. Which means that approximately one thousand unidentified bodies are found in France each year, compared with around sixty-six in Britain, which has a similar population. Most of the time the DNA from those bodies isn’t recorded either.” Lesson: don’t go missing in France, unless you want to. Harper Brown, arts afficiando, has finally got the career she wanted - a real job as a journalist at the Paris Observer - in Paris of course! Among the arts and culture articles her boss, Hyacinth, wants her to write Harper yearns to be taken seriously as a journalist and write serious articles. Harper is feisty and snarky and just a bit manipulative. She’s also not above using her feminine wiles to get what she wants. Despite all that I did actually like Harper because she didn’t moan and complain about things, she just got on with it and sometimes got even! She attends a small gallery which is launching an exhibition of works by hot new artist, Noah X, for an article she plans. There she meets the enigmatic Noah X although she doesn’t know it at the time and he doesn’t know she’s a journalist. Right from the start I knew this book was prime for screen adaptation. Author Melanie Hudson has set up her story’s opening so that it draws readers into her characters’ arcs from the outset. Immediately I needed to know why Sophie fainted and why Sascha felt he should be released from prison. Her vivid descriptions of the prison, of Paris, and of life on Sark make her writing visual and immersive. She also writes to connect with diverse readers because her story has universal themes we can all relate to; strength in the face of adversity, the power of love, ordinary heroism, the importance of friendship and support for our fellow man, and the perils of war. Something else I really liked about this book was the humanity it gave to Germans and German soldiers—they weren’t all Nazis, and they didn’t all support Hitler. (Yes, there were many people who chose evil during the war, and many truly horrific things happened as a result. I do not mean to diminish that.) Sebastian was just a man who had basically been forced into service as a teenager during WWI and made choices that damaged his soul because of the love he had for his brother. But he desired peace. We as humans have a tendency to lump others into “us and them” categories. Even many of the people of Sark, who knew Sebastian, found it difficult to turn off their “German = bad” setting. But it’s vital that we take the time and make effort to distinguish between those who choose evil and those who are forced to comply.

As the Germans approach the Channel Islands, Sebastian has to make choices: be the peace-loving man he has become or stand up and fight for his principles? When he and Sophie are separated, Sebastian is left realising love may have eluded him forever. Until a chance meeting in Paris sets the wheels in motion for a dangerously devastating love affair.

Other characters in the book include Gethyn a doctor working alongside Rosie and relate well with each other. The two encourage and help one another to stay strong and positive while in the desert. Rosie’s parents are lovely, and they also send her letters while in the Middle East with words of encouragement, which keeping her smiling. What once brought so much joy, peace and a sense of completeness, was lost to me, perhaps because I knew–oh how I knew–that my little place of paradise would be lost to me soon, and that one way or another, my freedom and my absolute sense of being home would be gone.’ Quibbles: The German term for a physician is Arzt, not doctor, which refers to Ph.Ds. Hudson’s timeline includes little time for college and medical schooling. Braun is pronounced the same in German as Brown in English; it’s English speakers who pronounce it incorrectly. Modernisms detracts. Contemporary readers with no sense of history may miss the contradictions.

An absolutely enthralling read from beginning to end...The historical research that has gone into this book is incredible. A fantastic story. A definite must read’ Amy No matter what Audrey Hepburn might have said about the city of love, it turns out Paris is not always a good idea... Gestapo officers are waiting for him with Wulf. The dirt is compromising photos of him (Sascha) with a man. Sebastian (as Sascha) is arrested and taken to prison, which is where we see him with the chaplain, Christoph, in the 1944 sections, telling the rest of the account. It’s rare that I’m surprised by the direction a story takes, but Drysdale managed to do so in The Paris Affair. The first quarter or so of the novel reads more like a romcom, so I wasn’t really expecting the twists in this tale that sees Harper caught up in an art world scandal, and become the target of a serial killer. While not a strong thriller, there are certainly moments of tension, and the pace is persuasive. Quite simply epic! It should be made into a film, as the writing is so beautifully visual and presses all the emotional buttons’ MandyI read Pip Drysdale's The Sunday Girl when it was released in 2018 and her subsequent novel of suspense The Strangers We Know the following year. Both feature flawed but engaging narrators and relationships-gone-bad, with themes around trust and disappointment. Drysdale’s mystery plot was multi-layered and complex. She managed to link everything together. A lot of the scenes I thought she’d written to merely highlight some character trait of Harper’s, ended up being integral to the main plot in the end. Very clever indeed. The Paris Affair is the third novel by Australian author, Pip Drysdale. Three weeks into her new job as arts and culture writer for online English-language magazine The Paris Observer, Harper Brown is desperate to please her editor-in-chief, Hyacinth Cromwell-Scott, hoping she might get a chance at the more prestigious crime column.