Review: A Paris Apartment By: Michelle Gable

A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

April Vogt is looking to escape her own place, her own life, the one where her husband has just recently confessed to a one night stand with a co worker, the one where she doesn't have a strong family relationship, the one where the walls are crumbling - when the opportunity comes in the form of work. She is a furniture specialist for Sotheby's and a very special apartment in Paris, seven rooms, locked up for the last forty years, has just become hers to go through.
The moment she walks through the door of the apartment and a Boldini painting awaits her, she knows that the wonders in this horders home is going to wonderous. Especially after finding the owners journal. It is in the journal that April is introduced to Marthe De Florian, an orphan who has risen to demimondaine, one who has a love hate relationship with the artist Boldini and pure hatred for Victor Hugo's granddaughter. No longer are the gilded ostrich eggs an interest to April, this woman is, and the lawyer to the heir to the apartment provides a distraction.
April is an almost vapid and unlikable character, whereas the life of M de Florian flows off the page with vivid bright energy that I almost couldn't absolve the fact that the two were written in the same book yet by the same person. Is it through the journals that April comes alive, that she resolves her life... wouldn't that be too easy, that maybe she is so bland that she finds her own life in that of the diary has has to choose just which man is her Boldini... too easy.
Oh, did I mention, an easy read.

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