In Paris Syndrome our protagonist is Happy Glass - a seventeen year old girl living in Brisbane and dreaming of going to Paris with her best friend. Happy is obsessed with all things Paris, not least the French film Amélie, and her own story is just as sweet and quirky as her hero's. (Reading this book actually inspired me to re-watch Amélie, and it was just as lovely as ever!)

Although Happy seems pretty off the wall at times I found her remarkably relatable. On the surface the book is about love and dreams and Paris, but it manages to cover a bunch of more heavy issues too. Alongside her Parisian fantasies, Happy is dealing with a bunch of pretty common life stuff including the moving to a new place, friendships changing, the breakup of her parents' marriage, and figuring out who she is and who she wants to be, and through this the book touches on loss, grief, disappointment, mental health and sexuality.

I was interested to read that Paris Syndrome really is an actual thing - Wikipedia describes it as "a transient mental disorder exhibited by some individuals when visiting or going on vacation to Paris, as a result of extreme shock derived from their discovery that Paris is not what they had expected it to be."

I found this one pretty delightful, and think it is a must read for fans of Amélie, and anyone who has (perhaps unrealistic) dreams of Parisian perfection.
I gave it 3.5 stars.

xo Bron

***Paris Syndrome***
On Goodreads
Genre: Contempory (YA)
Triggers: Grief, mental health
Source: Borrowed from the library.
Find the author here