Another of the books I borrowed from the library to satisfy my thriller craving! I think I’d just read The Paris Apartment, and I’d enjoyed both the thriller storyline and the atmosphere of the setting. I was hoping to re-visit that feeling again in another Parisian-set thriller, only this time with an entirely different kind of story.
In this one there’s a couple who are on a trip together. Stella has travelled a lot, having been both a flight attendant and in a relationship with a man whose wealth and lifestyle had her heading to all kinds of spectacular locales. But this time she’s with her husband Adam, someone she feels settled with, someone steady and reliable, someone who isn’t involved in shady underworld dealings and who isn’t shadowed by a security guard while travelling in a bullet proof vehicle. Or so she thinks.
But then the unimaginable happens. Having forgotten his sunglasses at the restaurant they just ate lunch at, Adam heads back to get them while Stella goes to the hotel to pack their bags in preparation for their departure from the city. Only before the two can meet up, there’s an explosion, and it came from the direction of the restaurant. Stella immediately heads towards the very place everyone else is running from, not knowing what she is going to find. She’s completely unprepared when she arrives at the restaurant, only to discover… it’s not there anymore. The explosion came from the very eatery Adam had headed to, and what remains is chaos. There are wounded people being moved out into the square, people trying to help find more inside the building, and emergency personnel arriving to begin taking charge of the scene. But what Stella can’t see is Adam. Not anywhere. Not in the people who are going back in to help, not in those injured on the grass, not even amongst those who have not survived. He’s nowhere, just gone.
So begins an increasingly panicked search for her husband, and then for any information she can get about him. As she keeps digging, she suddenly finds herself surrounded by suspicious people – sometimes she’s seeing someone following her, others her room has been searched while she’d been out. There seems to be much more going on than her husband having been injured or killed in the explosion – it seems like even before that he was involved in some sketchy business with some sketchy people.
Stella finds herself drawn back into a world she thought she’d left behind, and having to reach out to people from her own past who can help her navigate the dangerous situation she finds herself in. She doesn’t know who she can trust or what she’s dealing with, but she is sure of one thing: she has to find out what happened to Adam and who she was really married to. And she won’t leave Paris until she does.
As you’d think, it’s quite a fast-paced book. Lots of drama and interesting encounters, plenty of intrigue. It’s a good story, but not one that had me deeply invested. I don’t know if it’s that we don’t get to spend any time with the characters before the drama kicks off, or that I just couldn’t really find any common ground, but either way I felt like very much an outside spectator rather than being drawn into the story. So I’d say it’s a good one if you’re looking for a quick thriller that will keep you flipping pages, just not one that will have you sobbing into your e-reader or library book by the end!
A dream vacation turns deadly when secrets from the past catch up to a married couple in Paris in this new edge-of-your-seat thriller from USA Today bestselling author, Kimberly Belle.
When Stella met Adam, she thought she had finally found a nice, normal guy—a welcome change from her previous boyfriend and her precarious jetsetter lifestyle with him. But her secure world comes crashing down when Adam goes missing after an explosion in the city square. Unable to reach him, she panics.
As the French police investigate, it’s revealed that Adam was on their radar as a dealer of rare and stolen antiquities with a long roster of criminal clients. Reeling from this news, Stella is determined not to leave Paris until she has the full story. Was Adam a random victim or the target of the explosion? And why is someone following her through the streets of Paris?
An irresistible, fast-paced read set in some of Europe’s most inviting locales, The Paris Widow explores how sinister secrets of the past stay with us—no matter how far we travel. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Paris Widow
Author: Kimberly Belle
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook (Libby)
Published By: Park Row
Released: June 11, 2024
Genre: Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
Pages: 304
Date Read: March 15-18, 2025
Rating: 5/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.72/5 (10,195 ratings)