What do you wear to Paris? Ami and I discussed it for hours but I still couldn’t think of anything suitable. Ami said a trench coat with nothing underneath but your best underwear. That was only if some boy was meeting you at the airport, I said.
Lisette has just finished school and is taking a gap year. She travels to Paris to experience great works of art and brush up on her conversational French before she heads to university. Lise isn’t impressed when her clairvoyant landlady, Madame Cristophe and her mother, home in Australia, enrol her in language lessons with international students. She just wants to explore and experience Paris. But when she grudgingly attends her first class, she realises it’s not all bad – there’s a hot guy there, and she also makes some new friends. Maybe she might find more than she bargained for in Paris.
Lisette’s Paris Notebook is a quirky mix of romance and coming of age, featuring a slightly self-obsessed yet likeable main character. Lisette’s adventure is Paris is overshadowed by coming to terms with the death of the father she never got to meet, and her lack of previous romantic success. Teen readers will enjoy the Paris setting.
Lisette’s Paris Notebook, by Catherine Bateson
Allen & Unwin, 2017
ISBN 9781760293635