Life is filled with random encounters and Ellery Roulet, a 35-year-old American PR executive living and working in Paris, has experienced enough of them to last five lifetimes. When betrayal (job loss), loss (death of a parent), mistakes (infidelity), regrets (divorce) and even acceptance, enter Ellery’s life at different times, she learns that it is how she chooses to deal with some of life’s trickiest situations that shapes her soul. This bittersweet collection of tales shows just how messy and complicated life can be, and that sometimes there just aren’t any neat and easy solutions at all.

Ellery Roulet is a driven woman with experiences that run the gamut. Her life through the eyes of a few short stories goes from difficult to progression toward acceptance and understanding. Her experiences, feelings, relationships become who she is and through them she finds understanding as well as the potential for change. How would you experience Paris if it turned out to be less than the romantic picture it painted? Would you adapt or allow yourself to wilt in the bright light of day? This is the story of how one woman handles that very situation.

Romantic and gorgeous Paris. Even the cover of this series of short stories fills you with a sense of flitting hope for love, which was precisely the first thing that appealed to me when I was asked to review Encounters in Paris. I was also intrigued by the potential of a series of short stories combined to create a longer, still somewhat short, over arching plot line. Unfortunately, Encounters in Paris is not incredibly romantic and the short stories left me wanting more at numerous times.

Ellery was a wonderful character and I often felt terrible for her life’s circumstances. There were numerous times I wished I could rescue her from the longing left after her mother’s death and her divorce. It was also very different getting to know a character in this way and at times it felt a little disjointed because of the formatting. At times I felt I was just getting to know the surroundings and circumstances when suddenly, the “chapter/story” ended. What I wished was that Carolyn Moncel would write the story out into a full length novel. If she could flesh out the rest of the characters and add more connectivity between the sets of short stories I believe she could have a fantastic novel.

What I struggled with the most though through my reading of these series of short stories was the plot versus the exposition. There were points where I was so incredibly hooked into what was coming in the next page or so with Ellery’s life and suddenly I’d find myself trapped in an inner monologue about the disposition of postal workers in France versus those in the US. Not that that would have necessarily been wrong, had the postal worker’s characteristics had anything further to do with moving the plot forward. In this instance, I can see how it related to the story in hindsight, but during my reading it just left me feeling bogged down. This was only one occasion, and throughout the stories there were numerous times this happened. Unfortunately the excessive description left me distracted from the overall story and wishing for more character interaction.

Overall I felt this was a very good attempt at something that hasn’t often been done. Encounters in Paris as a set of short stories wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but were it turned into a full length novel with richer characters, more dialogue and less description I think I could easily fall in love with Carolyn Moncel’s writing. If you’re a fan of short stories and enjoy reading a small amount at a time, this may be just the right thing for you. Carolyn Moncel is definitely still an author I will be looking for in the future.

Thank you so much to the author, Carolyn Moncel, for providing a copy of the book for review!

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