The Paper Girl of Paris

by Jordyn Taylor

Overview

"A quick read that history lovers will easily devour"—Teen Vogue

"Get ready to be transported to Paris in Taylor's incredible debut novel."—Seventeen, Editor's Choice

Code Name Verity meets Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution in this gripping debut novel.

NOW:

Sixteen-year-old Alice is spending the summer in Paris, but she isn’t there for pastries and walks along the Seine. When her grandmother passed away two months ago, she left Alice an apartment in France that no one knew existed. An apartment that has been locked for more than seventy years.

Alice is determined to find out why the apartment was abandoned and why her grandmother never once mentioned the family she left behind when she moved to America after World War II. With the help of Paul, a charming Parisian student, she sets out to uncover the truth. However, the more time she spends digging through the mysteries of the past, the more she realizes there are secrets in the present that her family is still refusing to talk about.

THEN:

Sixteen-year-old Adalyn doesn’t recognize Paris anymore. Everywhere she looks, there are Nazis, and every day brings a new horror of life under the Occupation. When she meets Luc, the dashing and enigmatic leader of a resistance group, Adalyn feels she finally has a chance to fight back.

But keeping up the appearance of being a much-admired socialite while working to undermine the Nazis is more complicated than she could have imagined. As the war goes on, Adalyn finds herself having to make more and more compromises—to her safety, to her reputation, and to her relationships with the people she loves the most.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062936622
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/26/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	50,004
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Jordyn Taylor is a New York City–based writer and journalist, currently the deputy editor at Men’s Health magazine; her work has appeared in the New York Observer, Mic, and Glamour.com.

Editorial Reviews

04/20/2020

Taylor’s suspenseful debut tells the story of Adalyn Bonhomme, a teenage French Resistance worker in Paris during WWII, in her own words and as uncovered by her grandniece, 16-year-old American Alice Prewitt. Upon the death of Alice’s beloved grandmother, Chloe, she and her parents are stunned to learn of an abandoned family apartment in Paris that Chloe left to her. In Paris to “check out the apartment,” the Prewitts make another discovery: Chloe had a sister, Adalyn, with whom she was extremely close. Fortuitously finding her great-aunt’s diary and photos of her dining with Nazi officers, Alice—aided by handsome French teenager Paul—seeks to understand why her grandmother never spoke of Adalyn and their home. Relying on Adalyn’s journal—which never reveals her Resistance work—to solve this mystery, Alice finds Adalyn’s activities perplexing; readers, however, are privy to her firsthand account of posing as a Nazi sympathizer. Meanwhile, Adalyn’s romance with Paul grows, and she becomes desperate about her family’s silence regarding her mother’s depression, situations that parallel Adalyn’s experience. While the two voices can sound indistinct from each other, both absorbing narratives build momentum, posing thoughtful questions about secrets and loyalties. Ages 13–up. Agent: Danielle Burby, Nelson Literary. (May)

Publishers Weekly

06/05/2020

Gr 8 Up—In this debut historical novel, Alice and her family are introduced to the Nazi invasion of France through their own family history. When Alice's beloved grandmother passes away, she inherits an apartment in Paris that has been under lock and key since the 1940s. Alice and her family head to Paris to settle her grandmother's estate, though the trip is anything but relaxing. Alice's mother is taking the loss very hard and withdrawing into herself. Alice's father is bending over backward to keep everything cheerful, though Alice worries that her mother may need professional help to bounce back. Meanwhile, Alice has discovered a journal written by her great aunt Adalyn, a woman her grandmother never spoke about. Adalyn begins her journal in 1940 and details the changes to her beloved city and her escalating involvement in aiding French Resistance efforts. Armed with her laptop and strong coffee, Alice sets up a work station for herself at a local coffee shop and attempts to figure out what became of Adalyn by translating her great aunt's journal from French. There she meets Paul, who joins her in conducting her family research and blossoms into a love interest. Told from both Alice and Adalyn's perspectives, the story moves back and forth in time detailing Alice's research in the present and Adalyn's acts of espionage in the past. When Alice's father presents the idea to sell her grandmother's apartment, she races to discover whether Adalyn was a Nazi sympathizer, not realizing that she may be risking her mother's health and their relationship by further pursuing this mystery. VERDICT A gripping exploration of history and mental health set in the City of Lights from an outstanding new author; highly recommended for most collections.—Samantha Lumetta, P.L. of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH

School Library Journal

2020-02-09
Passionate, impulsive Chloe and her popular older sister, Adalyn, were inseparable—until the Nazis invaded France in 1940 and Adalyn started keeping secrets.

Over half a century later, Alice, Chloe’s 16-year-old American granddaughter, has just inherited her childhood home in Paris. The fully furnished apartment has clearly been neglected for decades and raises more questions than it answers: Why didn’t Gram talk about her childhood? Who is the second girl in the photos throughout the apartment? Why didn’t Gram’s family return there after the war? Alice’s father is reluctant to discuss anything that might upset Alice’s mother, who’s still reeling from her mother’s death, so Alice decides to find answers on her own. What she eventually learns both shocks and heals her family. Chapters alternate between Alice’s and Adalyn’s voices, narrating Adalyn’s experience as a French Christian of the Nazi occupation and Alice’s attempts to understand what happened after the war. The girls’ stories parallel one another in significant ways: Each has a romance with a young Frenchman, each has a parent struggling with depression, and each must consider the lengths she would go to protect those she loves. Though at times feeling a bit rushed, Alice’s engaging contemporary perspective neatly frames Adalyn’s immersive, heartbreaking story as it slowly unfolds—providing an important history lesson as well as a framework for discussing depression. Alice and her family are white.

Gripping. (Historical fiction. 12-18)

Kirkus Reviews

"If historical fiction is your jam, then we've got a treat for you with this debut novel." 

CNN Underscored 

A must-read for fans of Code Name Verity, Taylor’s debut aptly blends mystery, romance, history, and complicated family dynamics into a compulsively readable story.

Liz Lawson

"A beautiful story of two girls' courage and commitment seven decades apart. THE PAPER GIRL OF PARIS takes us into the very heart of Paris, in both the darkest hours of the German occupation and of one modern family's deep grief, and invites us to fall in love. A finely crafted historical fiction debut."

Caroline Leech

"A quick read that history lovers will easily devour"

Teen Vogue

"Get ready to be transported to Paris in Taylor's incredible debut novel."

Editor's Choice Seventeen

Jordyn Taylor has written a book with all the gems you hope for in a story to treasure: mystery, romance, fi erce heroines doing brave things in the face of everything from familial trauma to historical tragedy. The way these parallel stories converge is brilliant and satisfying. I had to read this book all at once.

Florence Gonsalves

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