I decided to read The Paper Palace when it came in my #gifted LoveMyRead subscription box and when it was chosen by Reese Witherspoon to be her book of the month. I didn’t really know what to expect from this book as I went into it having not read the blurb and having not really seen it spoken about much, so as I was reading, I really felt like I was the only person reading this book and wanted everyone to read it too. 

It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at "The Paper Palace"--the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives. As Heller colours in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanours of families.

I suppose my first comment is that I did expect more action in the story because of the way the first chapter starts. Our main character has just cheated on her husband right under his nose with her best friend. So that packs a punch right and I found myself buckling myself in ready for DRAMA. Yet what I didn’t realise was in fact the story about how our main character and narrator has become the woman she is today. 

So we are treated to certain flashbacks into the time Elle spent at ‘The Paper Palace’ when she was younger and the devastating experiences she had there and how this has damaged her relationship with her mother, her best friend Jonah and even her husband. She keeps this huge and awful secret from nearly everyone close to her which ultimately means that as a fifty-year-old, she doesn’t feel like she can't love her husband or her children properly. As much as I found her annoying and self-centred in some parts of the book, but then in the next moment, my heart would break for her and I would begin to understand why she acted like she did. 

‘The Paper Palace’ itself was sat on the edge of a lake which Miranda Cowley Heller describes excellently and makes it sound so dreamy. As a water sign, I find that when I am near or in water, I am at my happiest and I even crave to be near water sometimes. Looking back at my life, I have also had some of my best epiphanies whilst in water so I found the setting of this book and what the water meant to Elle really relatable. I fully enjoyed those moments of the book and I suppose that is why I found Elle as a character incredibly poignant.

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