Love in Paris
A rainy bookshop, one last copy, two hands reaching at the same moment—and neither willing to let go first.
Story Overview
Juliet Moreau has spent the last three years painting in the wrong city. She takes a fellowship in Paris meaning to prove something—to herself, mostly—and spends her first evening getting caught in the rain and ducking into a bookshop on the Rue de Bièvre. She reaches for the only copy of a dog-eared Rimbaud collection on the shelf. So does someone else. What happens next is not a love story yet. It is, at first, just an argument about a book. But arguments in small bookshops in the rain have a way of becoming more than they intend to be.
Chapter Index
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Main Characters
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Juliet Moreau
Juliet is twenty-eight, half-French by inheritance and entirely American by upbringing, which means she speaks the language well enough to argue in it and badly enough to lose. She paints large, difficult canvases that critics call 'promising' and she calls 'not finished yet.' The Paris fellowship is her third attempt at a new start and she is trying, this time, not to need it to save her.
Étienne Marchetti
Étienne restores old buildings for a living and collects first editions as a hobby he treats more seriously than the living. He is careful, precise, and slightly infuriating in conversation—the kind of man who knows exactly what he thinks but takes his time saying it, which Juliet immediately finds either appealing or maddening depending on the hour.
Céline Dufour
Céline has lived in Paris her whole life and has the particular Parisian gift of making everything look effortless, including friendship. She invited Juliet for the fellowship, is aggressively on her side, and has already decided Étienne is interesting based entirely on secondhand information and instinct.
Henri Beaumont
Henri has run Librairie du Pont for thirty-one years. He has watched a great many people fall in love in his shop, which he considers a secondary service he provides at no extra charge. He does not intervene in these matters. He does, occasionally, offer tea.