Sometimes, it takes me longer to finish a book that I’m reading with my eyes, especially if the book is boring and not holding my attention. It took me a week to finish this book but let me be perfectly clear, that was not due to boredom. I parse out a Kate Clayborn book like my 15 yo parses out the pricey macarons from Ladurée, the famed French patisserie with its flagship store in Paris. 

Kate Clayborn can write. She is a master of using just the exact right words to build a world, a setting, characters, and a romance so fraught with tension and angst and grief and longing that sometimes, I just had to set it down and exhale. 

I’ve never been to Paris, France, have never walked down charming little cobblestone paths and eaten at chic Parisian cafes and wandered the Louvre or strolled through Versailles. And yet, this book might be the closest I’ve ever come to doing all those things. Because when Kate Clayborn decides upon a setting for her book, she doesn’t just use it as background noise, no, she plunks the reader right into the heart of the place and you feel as if you’re right there. You can almost smell the air (to me Paris smells like a combination of dirty river water, Chanel No. 5, and pain au chocolate), hear the frenetic noises that make up the sounds of the city, and if you close your eyes just so, you can almost imagine two people, two extremely fragile, broken people mending their hurts as they fall irrevocably in love with each other. 

Layla Bailey is many things, chief amongst them, an amicably divorced physician on her way to her former sister-in-law’s destination wedding in Paris. She is fine. All caps FINE even. She is very amicably divorced and all too happy to spend a week in arguably the most romantic city on earth, surrounded by her ex and his family who have continued to treat her as one of their own. Oh, and her ex’s new girlfriend. FUN. She is FINE and she will have FUN. 

Enter Griffin Testa, the best man. A gruff curmudgeon with a lot of battle scars, both external (he was badly burned in a fire) and internal. Living with neuropathic pain due to his burn injuries, life has become a struggle for him. Traveling to new places, adjusting to new spaces, sleeping in a bed not his own, eating in restaurants he’s not accustomed to, all these things most of us take for granted, are difficult and require practice for Griffin. 

Layla has one simple objective during this Parisian vacation. To remain unbothered and make it clear that she is FINE and is absolutely not nursing a broken heart or pining for Jamie, her ex husband. 

Griffin has one simple objective during this Parisian vacation. To make sure Michael marries Emily without any issues or hiccups. 

But when Emily starts to have second thoughts, Griffin forces Layla fix what he believes she broke. And thus begins a romance so full of yearning and longing between two people who have lost their sense of self and must figure out who they are and who they want to be if they have any hope of finding a happily ever after with each other. 

This book is gorgeous in a way that’s hard to put into words. Kate Clayborn’s prose is unmatched. She makes it look so easy and effortless but I cannot imagine it is. There are lines in this book that just took my breath away and while this book isn’t all that steamy (yes, there are open door sex scenes), it’s actually a public scene involving handholding of all things, that reeks of so much eroticism and subtext, that I am flummoxed. How could handholding be made erotic?? Trust Kate Clayborn to find a way. 

There are very few authors who can do character development the way that Kate Clayborn can and this book is no different. You feel Griffin’s pain and Layla’s pain, the lack of forward progression in their lives, the way they have stagnated, and the moment they decide to bloom anew. It is not a choice easily made nor is it one made quickly. Griffin, especially, needs time, time to be intentional about his choices, about the gates he wants to walk through and the gates he wants to avoid. And if Griffin’s task is to open himself back up to life and all that it has to offer, then Layla’s is to build boundaries, especially with her former in-laws (seriously, why did Emily even invite her to her wedding knowing her brother was bringing his new girlfriend!?). 

I could have very easily inhaled this book. Gobbled it up like a plate of charcuterie or an almond croissant. But this book deserves to be savored, to be nibbled. The writing, the language, it’s so breathtakingly stunning and yet, not overwrought. There’s a scene where Griffin explains to Layla how she looks to him. “A city of light…A tower of gold….Like Paris.” And then, “Like yourself. Like the woman I love. Like Layla Bailey.” Simple. Profound. Beautiful. 

Grade: A

Content Notes: severe burn injuries from a past fire, neuropathic pain, dead friend, dead mom at a young age, emotionally distant father, divorce, depression and anxiety and reference to suicidal ideation, mention of therapy