CHRISTMAS IN PARIS by Anita Hughes takes place in the span of about a week. Maybe two, but no more than a month. Our heroine starts the book in love with one man and engaged to another by the end of it. She's either an absolute idiot with no self-awareness nor understanding of how relationships actually work, or she's an exceptionally sheltered fourteen-year-old girl, who dreams of her prince coming but has never stopped to think about what do once he gets there. The language she uses about other people, but particularly men, demonstrates a very sheltered understanding of humans. For example, she's very afraid at one point as some petty theft has happened and she puts all her trust in a man she met approximately 36hrs before. This is not a decision that most women traveling alone would make. Additionally, there's a whole bit with a fortune teller that I found a bit old-fashioned.

The author clearly wanted to capture the magic of Paris at Christmas (I mean, it's the literal title) and that's fantastic. If someone is looking for a tourist guide to how to "do" Paris at Christmas, than this would perhaps be helpful. All of the highlights are included and the writing is good at communicating that magic. On that front, the story is a lovely diversion from real life.

However, when it comes to the love story, I couldn't track with the heroine, nor could I believe any of the other characters in this work. The tagline says this story is about trust, but I'm not entirely sure how it can be in the time frame the author sets up. Call me a cynic, but I want happily ever afters and those require time and trust and communication and things that take longer than a week to build. I spent the majority of this work rolling my eyes and wondering if "trust" is something that we're allowed to assume can be automatic at the level this work expects.

I'm also someone who enjoys happily ever afters that could work in "real life". I don't usually go for the ones that can only exist in romance novels, so CHRISTMAS IN PARIS just didn't work on me.