Friday Memes: Paris Is Always a Good Idea by Jenn McKinlay

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

"I'm getting married."

"Huh?"

"We've already picked out colors, pink and gray."

"Um...pink and what?"

"Gray. What do you think, Chelsea? I want your honest opinion. Is that too retro?"

I stared at my middle-aged widowed father. We were standing in a bridal store in central Boston on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley Streets, and he was talking to me about wedding colors. His wedding colors.

Friday 56:

When Zoe said she knew the perfect beautician, she wasn't exaggerating. Which was how I found myself being plucked, primped, powdered, and polished down to a molecular level at a salon where the stylist, Estelle, did not make small talk but rather fixed me with an impersonal and terrifying stare, with which she assessed what was required to make this American lump - at least, that was what I assumed she considered me - into a cosmopolitan woman worthy of their fair city.

This week I am spotlighting Paris Is Always a Good Idea by Jenn McKinlay. This one is from my review stack. Here is the description from Amazon:

A thirty-year-old woman retraces her gap year through Ireland, France, and Italy to find love—and herself—in this hilarious and heartfelt novel.

It's been seven years since Chelsea Martin embarked on her yearlong postcollege European adventure. Since then, she's lost her mother to cancer and watched her sister marry twice, while Chelsea's thrown herself into work, becoming one of the most talented fundraisers for the American Cancer Coalition, and with the exception of one annoyingly competent coworker, Jason Knightley, her status as most successful moneymaker is unquestioned.

When her introverted mathematician father announces he's getting remarried, Chelsea is forced to acknowledge that her life stopped after her mother died and that the last time she can remember being happy, in love, or enjoying her life was on her year abroad. Inspired to retrace her steps—to find Colin in Ireland, Jean Claude in France, and Marcelino in Italy—Chelsea hopes that one of these three men who stole her heart so many years ago can help her find it again.

From the start of her journey nothing goes as planned, but as Chelsea reconnects with her old self, she also finds love in the very last place she expected.