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I reached 28% before I couldn’t take this story for a second longer. Doesn’t seem all that far in, I know, but it made me think and feel A LOT in that 28% and I want to talk about it. The Paris Match might be the perfect example of ‘your mileage may vary’.
I picked this book up for the gorgeous cover. I was so enamoured of the cover and what I assumed the feel of the book would be that the blurb, which might have made me pause, didn’t even bother me.
Physician Layla Bailey has spent over a year telling herself she’s moved on from a painful but amicable divorce from her college sweetheart. Staying friends with her ex seemed like the mature thing to do, but when Layla is invited to her former sister-in-law’s destination wedding in Paris—where Layla once spent her own romantic honeymoon—she knows her commitment to maturity might be her worst enemy…especially since her ex isn’t attending alone.
The only thing that could make the week more difficult is getting through it without the distraction of the wedding…. But when what Layla thought was a harmless conversation about the choices of her younger self leads to the bride getting cold feet, Layla finds herself facing down the groom’s mysterious, taciturn best man, Griffin, who will do anything to make sure this wedding happens.
Since she broke it, Griff demands she help him fix it. Going along with his plan to alleviate the engaged couple’s doubts seems like Layla’s best chance at maintaining a good relationship with a family she once called her own. But as she learns more about the past heartbreak that’s driving Griff to help his friend, she gets closer and closer to confronting the true depth of her own pain…while finding herself more and more willing to risk it all again for Griff.
Yup, you read that right: she’s going to her former sister-in-law’s wedding. I have never, not once, not ever had an amicable break up, nevermind stayed in touch with the family of my ex, so the very idea of going to a wedding like this is beyond me. But the cover was gorgeous and I was curious if I could enjoy a book that diverged so strongly from my personal views and experience (viz. Don’t remain friends with exes) so in I dove.
The book opens with Layla, a hospitalist, flying to Paris and responding to a call for medical personnel by the flight crew. A teenager had fainted. I forget why she fainted but she was going to be fine. (Side note: this was the first divergence from my experience. I fainted on a flight when I was younger and travelling alone. The cabin crew just told me to go back to my seat and stop drinking alcohol. Reader, I hadn’t been drinking. Anyway)
During the interaction, Layla used her doctor persona: calm, engaged, reassuring. This is the first of several masks that Layla puts on, or, more accurately, masks that she feels she should wear. Right from the beginning and throughout the quarter I read, Layla very consciously dons masks to fit the occasion. On the one hand, this is a totally normal thing to do. I’m certainly not the same with my boss as I am with my partner, but there are still similarities between those versions of myself. Both expressions are still authentically me, just with some aspects highlighted or hidden as the case demands.
With Layla, it felt like a conscious donning of a persona that is not authentically her. In this particular instance, it’s entirely appropriate that she act calm and professional during a medical crisis, but as the book unfolds, she continues to mask her true feelings and always focuses on what she feels she should portray. Even down to choosing a wardrobe for the trip that will reinforce the masks she’s wearing. I assume the resolution of the story will involve Layla learning to be more authentically herself. Anyway, that aspect of her character made me think about masks and authenticity.
Incidentally, the only person who notices that she wears these masks rather than sharing more of her true self is Griffin and it irritates him a great deal. Griffin is the groom’s best man and the man who witnessed the incident on the plane. Griffin wants her to tell the truth which is a bit rich coming from him because he is not at all honest or open about what’s going on inside of himself. He’s rude, abrupt and a bit cruel instead of admitting to how he really feels – even with his alleged best friend, the groom.
Griffin clearly has a lot going on based on the hints and glimpses behind the abrupt, confrontational and aloof exterior. He is heavily scarred and lives a reclusive life and has chronic pain, but that’s all I knew when I stopped reading. He has microscopic flickers of humanity when he, for example, holds out his hand to help Layla out of the car. And then when he tries to intervene in what looks like a fraught conversation, but those are the only two times he does it. Is that enough? Maybe? Combined with everything else going on, he wasn’t compelling to me; he was frustrating and opaque, giving me little reason to become invested in his potential character growth.
I also really struggled with the setup: it seems so cruel and immature to ask so much of Layla, even if she agrees to all of it. After months of no interaction, Layla’s former sister in law, Emily, is asking her to attend a destination wedding with a full week of events for a very small group of people – including Jamie, the ex, and his new girlfriend, Samantha – in Paris, where Jamie and Layla celebrated their honeymoon. Again, Layla agreed, a decision I question, but also: YIKES.
And when Emily begins to doubt the wisdom of her impending marriage, she leans on Layla, excluding her best friend and maid of honor, Rosie.
While there isn’t a lot going on with Rosie as a character, it still felt cruel to snub her in this way. She’s a caricature of a ditzy, alternative (as in fashion/style) woman who lacks subtlety in her behaviour and her actions. There is little indication in the first quarter of the story that Rosie and Emily are close, so I was mystified at her choice of maid of honour.
The writing is strong, if a little bogged down by (in my opinion) unnecessary detail when describing interactions between the characters. That detail makes scenes lose their dynamism and impact when every eyebrow twitch gets a paragraph. Okay, maybe not a paragraph, but still too much detail. The writing mostly effectively conveyed the many emotions that Layla was feeling. It made it a tough read because there are clearly very big, very vulnerable emotions at play here for Layla.
Then we have Samantha, the new girlfriend. The moment she was described as looking young and scared, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I couldn’t take it for a second longer and stopped reading after that. Taken by itself, a young and unsure new girlfriend isn’t too much to handle, but it was the culmination of everything that had happened so far in the story that made it too much. I felt a tremendous amount of empathy for Samantha and that was too much emotional yikes after the previous chapters of emotional yikes. I kept wondering how must Samantha feel about the situation, or even Jamie? I honestly felt terrible for her. Samantha’s maybe-one-day sister-in-law so strongly prefers Layla over her and even over Jamie.
Ultimately, the plot, the characters, and the increasing tension became too much for me and my anxiety and discomfort that I had to stop reading. I couldn’t stop wondering why Layla agreed, why she was unable to say no to anyone in her ex’s family, and asking myself if Emily’s inviting Layla to the event was as cruel as it seemed to me. I found Griffin irritating, and Layla just as confusing. I spent so much time fretting over the characters and how the story made me feel that I couldn’t continue.
Although this is a DNF for me, I am very curious about how others will feel about it. If you finish the book, please do report back.
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Medium Dior Book Tote, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, $3600.00
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