MOONLIGHT OVER PARIS: A NOVEL is an old fashioned romance told and retold many times before. There aren’t any surprises. We know from the outset, perhaps even from the cover, exactly how the story will develop and end. Still, I found it a good read and worthy of recommending.
A young, attractive lady recovering from a failed romance seeks to recover by going to Paris to pursue her long suppressed desire to be an artist. Helena is able to do so because, as we soon discover, she is from a very wealthy family. While in Paris, Helena lives with a wealthy aunt who is a bit “modern.”
It is the 1920s, a period when those who survived the trauma of the Great War are trying to forget it by embracing all things new and modern. Helena soon finds friends among a small group of art students. Not surprisingly, Helena meets a young American named Sam Howard who is working for the Chicago Tribune. Like Helena, Sam is trying to escape his past. In his case it is the expectation that he will assume leadership of Howard Steel.
There are cameo appearances of various American expatriate writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernst Hemingway, members of what will later be remembered as the “Lost Generation.” To include the writers without mention of Sylvia Beach and her Shakespeare and Company Bookstore would not do, and so they are a part of the ambiance of the story.
MOONLIGHT OVER PARIS reminds me of the romance novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It does not need any hot and steamy love scenes to keep the reader’s attention. It is simply a pleasant novel to enjoy when one feels the need to relax and put mind in neutral. Read and enjoy.
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