A review by shelby1994
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0



“I’m in love with you, too,” I say. “But I’m not sure it matters.”

A weird one!

In the hands of a less observant author, this could have easily taken a nose-drive into the trash heap. “Childhood best-friend // Charismatic Foreign Hottie” love-triangles basically write themselves, and it’s a coin-flip who wins out in each re-telling. Heller is able to set Elle’s story about through her watercolor landscaping and wry, resentful cast of mothers and daughters who love each other only slightly more than they hate each other. 

Too bad this man isn’t worth shit. Elle spends a day and a lifetime wrestling with whether getting with her childhood best friend is worth digging up all the tragedy in their past. But as soon as he tumbles onto the page, he immediately screams “red flag.” 
Incomprehensibly possessive. Can’t seem to take no for an answer. Uncomfortably hung up on someone he hasn’t seen since puberty. Has the same alien-like precociousness as a 40-year-old that he did as a 9-year-old. 
I am all here for a tormented, possibly marriage-ruining love story. But this poor-man’s Colleen Hoover escapade wasn’t it. 


Read If You:
Liked Elin Hilderbrand’s ‘28 Summers’
Are fluent in WASP
Have a place you always go back to when you need to find true north

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