Book Review: All the Flowers in Paris

This book is reminiscent of Sarah's Key (by Tatiana de Rosnay). It progresses with parallel plot lines, following a modern American woman in Paris teasing out the story of a Parisian Jew during WWII. In All the Flowers in Paris we meet Caroline, racing away from a Paris cafe on her bicycle, head full of indignation at a man seeking her forgiveness. When she swerves to miss pedestrians and plows into an oncoming truck, the hook intensifies as she wakens with amnesia. They can only piece together the bare minimum. She returns to her ornate apartment on the Rue Cler almost paralyzed by questions. How had she come to live there? Why is there an untouched room within the apartment? Why had she led such a sad, isolated life before her accident? As Caroline uncovers more of who she is, she also unearths the story of an earlier tenant, Celine, who ran a flower shop with her father during wartime. Celine and her young daughter, Cosette, bravely faced the atrocities of war. Fans of Sarah's Key and The Nightingale will enjoy this novel.