Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop … based on the title alone, this should have been a home run.
✅ I like magic
✅ I like Paris
✅ I like tea
… what could go wrong?!
What happens:
Vanessa Yu is an accountant in California desperate (kinda?) to find true love. However, because she was born with the ability to tell the future, – a hereditary gift that she hates and tries to suppress – fate dictates that she is soulmate-less.
I dunno 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t make the rules.
As her powers grow more volatile, Vanessa accepts an invitation to train with her aunt in Paris. Once there, she flits around Paris’s monuments; spends a couple days working in the tea shop (because a couple days is enough to clear 24 years of suppressed fortunes); solves Parisian racism; meets her true love; and reunites her aunt with her true love.
And they lived happily ever after.
🤦🏼♀️
First lines:
I predicted the future on my third birthday. My aunts had been drinking their tea, and Ma had left her cup on the small table beside the sofa. As any curious child would, I imitated the habits of the older women: my two small hands cradled the ceramic of the handleless cup, fingertips not quite encompassing its circumference. I took a sip. As I gazed at the tea leaves floating at the bottom, my vision blurred and my mouth filled with the bitter taste of chewing on a grapefruit rind.
Highs and lows:
✔️ My first grown-up chick lit! I think the last certifiable chick-lit that I read was The Princess Diaries in grade 9. So, yay for exploring a new genre?
✔️ It was perfectly brainless reading. I tackled this book over the course of Thursday and Friday evening, at the end of a super draining residency week. Vanessa Yu’s was laughably simple … you knew exactly where it was going and how it was going to get there. Very little focus was required.
❓ Vanessa is meh. She starts the book passive, full of complaints, and emotionally immature. She ends the book … a bit better? Though, most of her growth felt contrived and plot-pointy rather than organic.
❌ I don’t read chick-lit … But, even I know this book is absolutely stuffed full of clichés. It was … boring.
❌ Really? Marriage? The book had SO much potential to be thoughtful and empowering. Instead, it ends with and-they-found-their-soulmate-got-married-and-lived-happily-ever-after. Why oh why is happiness always contingent on marriage?!
❌ There is too much going on. This book is full … there are multiple themes introduced in the first few chapters, including art, food, family, culture, Paris, romance, folklore, and destiny. None of them are fully developed, and some – like Vanessa’s fascination with art history – feel like they’ve been tossed in solely for pretentious points.
❌ The world-building. The Paris of this book – plus Vanessa’s life – was entirely plastic. Paris read like a stereotype; and Vanessa has endless disposable income to enjoy it with (first-class flights! designer clothes! gorgeous homes with fresh flowers! decadent meals!).
❌ The level of detail. Descriptive prose? Yes! (Yay!) prose so weighted down with descriptives that it interrupts the flow and slows the plot to a glacial rate? Lim goes into painfully irrelevant detail about completely meaningless information: the fake wood grain of a cafe’s chairs; the fact that Vanessa’s apartment is 1500 square feet; the herringbone tile backsplash; the sans-serif font on the bakery’s sign. It’s pointless, and doesn’t contribute at all to the story.
❌ Stop name dropping designer brands. What is this? Crazy Rich Asians?
❌ Canadians don’t sound like that. Audio book critique. Love-interest Marc is supposed to be from Montreal. He does not sound like he’s Montreal. Or Toronto. Or Moncton. Or Winnipeg. Or Vancouver. Or anywhere else in this big ol’ country of mine.
Final thoughts:
Vanessa Yu’s reads like a box of chocolates: You know exactly what you’ll find inside (chocolates, duh!). And, while the first few bites were sweet and fun, after about number 3 I started to feel sick.
What hurts the most was the wasted potential. This book could have challenged – like challenged! – boring rom-com clichés about love, soulmates, happiness, and how women define themselves. Instead, it took the easy road and surrendered to simplistic plot devices and surface-level feel-goods.
The details:
- The book: Vanessa Yu’s Magic Paris Tea Ship
- Author: Roselle Lim
- Publication: 2020, Berkley
- My copy: Public library
- Read dates: May 2021
- Rating/5: ☕☕
The Geeky Jock 