Contemporary fiction that touches so many emotions!
Meet Me in Paris
Adult, New Adult, Women's contemporary fiction, Contemporary romance
Gallery Books
July 28, 2026
Kindle, Hardcover, Audiobook, Audio CD
368
Nine Americans in Paris. Seven intertwined love stories. One City of Light. Love Actually meets The Notebook in a tale of love, loss, and finding your way home, all set over the course of one life-changing week in Paris. Julia Glover has brought her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Piper, to Paris for the first time—but they know it will also be their last trip here together. Julia is dying, and as the mother and daughter desperately try to make memories together as the clock ticks down, the world opens up around them. Piper meets a cute French waiter, who might just understand her better than anyone she’s ever met, and Julia meets a man at a dive bar and struggles with how to tell him the truth about her future. Rock star Jackson Quick’s glory days are behind him. He had a handful of hit songs thirty years ago, but he hasn’t toured in a decade. This week, he’ll launch his reunion tour in Paris, the city where it all began. But he wants more out of life than being defined by fame. When he meets a woman who finally sees him for who he is at his core, the ground shifts beneath his feet. Henry McGee has been writing hit songs for decades—including Jackson Quick’s biggest hit, City of Light. But his secret is that every love song he’s ever written is for a woman named Celeste, whom he loved a lifetime ago, when they were both teenagers in Paris during World War II. He has spent eighty years believing she died—but when a letter arrives telling him the opposite, he’s on the first flight to France. Can he break through the haze of her dementia, using the songs he’s written all these years, to remind her of who they once were to each other—and to tell her he came back for her? Henry’s granddaughter, Melody, has just discovered that her husband of twenty years, Gilles, a French cosmetics executive, is having an affair. When she confronts him, he tearfully apologizes and begs her to forgive him. But can she? And, perhaps even more importantly, does she want to? Or is there a different kind of life out there for her if she chooses to be alone? These intertwining stories—plus several others—unfold over a few breathtaking spring days, as an unforgettable group of Americans in Paris must find their way to their own versions of happily ever after in the City of Light.
“Something about Paris brought love to the surface, made people open their hearts in ways they never had before, made lovers out of strangers.”
Kristin Harmel’s Meet Me in Paris is a captivating encounter with nine American’s whose intertwining and overlapping time in Paris, the City of Lights, encapsulates the journey of love and loss in life. Each of these stories could be a book of their own with their engaging characters and unique storylines. Each plot explores different facets of love and loss. Julia and Piper’s story start the book and is a beautiful example of love between a mother and daughter who are faced with the loss of the Julia to cancer while at the same time that Piper experiences first love. The subsequent characters and storylines are introduced through either direct engagement with previous characters or proximity to previous scenes which provides a beautifully crafted reading experience and a deep emotional investment in the outcomes. Each character storyline is told from that character’s POV. Kristin seamlessly transitions between the multiple characters with a naturally unique “voice” for each and other “clues” that help distinguish stories. Honestly, I was not sure that I would be able to keep track of so many plots and characters or enjoy all the variations, but Kristin’s skill and vision made this extremely enjoyable and easy to follow and reinforced her as one of my favorite authors.
Meet Me in Paris is a thought provoking and emotionally touching book. Each storyline is like a single facet of glass that when pieced together is a beautiful mosaic of love and loss in the human existence. Do we truly know and understand love with the foil of loss in our lives? Maybe, but the appreciation of that love is greater when we know the feeling of loss. This idea is expressed so beautifully in Henry’s story. As a teenager in WWII, Henry fell madly in love with French resistance fighter, Celeste, writing the love song City of Light specifically for her (which he then sold, and it became one of the most iconic love songs for decades). He was crushed when after the war he was told that she had died. Now in his 90’s he learns that she is still alive but with advanced dementia. Even after a life fully lived, his love for her has never wavered and he flies to Paris to try and connect with her and tell her he never stopped loving her. This love song and mission become the mortar that adheres the other stories into this beautiful work of art of love and loss.
Kristin Harmel is better known for her historical fiction, especially stories set in France, so a contemporary fiction in the same setting seemed plausible to me. But having followed her health events on social media and then reading her author’s notes the significance of Meet Me in Paris goes much deeper. Her personal connection to many of the hopes and fears she so poignantly conveys in this book gives the characters an authenticity that a different writer, who had never experienced these things, would be hard pressed to express at the level she does. This book, with its moving stories will make your heart expand, your thoughts turn towards an appreciation of those in your life you cherish and give you a determination to live and love to the fullest each and every day. It’s for all these reasons that Meet Me in Paris was absolutely a five-star read for me.
Tanya’s love for books has been a lifelong passion that she likes sharing with others. Reading is also the thing that relaxes her after a day of juggling the many responsibilities that come with being being wife to an amazing man, mother to four great kids spread around the world, business manager, and farm hand on their place in southwest Missouri; home to Akaushi cattle and a menagerie of pygmy goats, horses, chickens, dogs and cats.
