Secrets of Paris

January 5, 2011 Luanne

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Passion and friendship get equal billing in Secrets of Paris, an entertaining love story, shaded with dark undertones, from the author of Crazy in Love. Lydie McBride, a photographer's stylist, and her architect husband Michael move to Paris while Michael, on a cultural exchange program, redesigns a room in the Louvre.

Lydie is still reeling from the shock of her father's recent death in a murder-suicide with the young woman who was his lover. As Lydie is befriended by sophisticated Patrice d'Origny, a young Bostonian married to the owner of a fashionable jewelry store, Michael begins an affair with an eccentric French biographer who is engrossed in her 17th-century subject, Mme de Sevigne. Asked to design the new d'Origny catalogue, Lydie decides to stage a ball in a nearby chateau. While working on their separate projects, she and Michael try to determine whether their once wholehearted love can be recovered. Lively and appealing characters--notably Lydie herself--the Paris setting and themes of betrayal and forgiveness distinguish this spirited romance.

–Publishers Weekly

Once again Rice ( Crazy in Love, LJ 9/1/88; Stone Heart, LJ 4/15/90) weaves a tale of modern-day life that's hard to put down. This time the heroine is Lydie McBride and the setting is Paris. Lydie is trying to come to grips with a family tragedy while spending a year in Paris with her husband Michael. While Lydie is developing a friendship with American Patrice d'Origny, Michael is drawn into an affair with a French coworker. Michael's betrayal rocks the marriage, and Lydie is forced to examine her feelings about her family and her marriage while virtually separated from both in Paris. This is a novel of friendship, love, and betrayal that lets you into the minds of all the participants. It is one of those books that you don't want to end because you want to know what happens to all of the people in it. Highly recommended.

–Kathy Ingels Helmond, Indiana Univ./ Purdue Univ. at Indianapolis Lib.

This wonderful image is by Saul Leiter. I found it on a postcard when I lived in Paris, and I sent it to my editor at Viking and it became part of the original hardcover jacket.

I loved the woman writing and reading in a cafe; she reminded me of Lydie, the main character, and also of myself.

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