Rating: 3.5

Wasn't she the siren a few years ago, the women Vic boasted about? "My wife loves sex," he once told a friend of theirs. "You lucky fuck," the friend said. Whenever they finished making love, Riley would whisper in Vic's ear: "You lucky fuck." And he would fall asleep with a smile on his face.

She hasn't seen that smile in a long time.

That quote made me laugh and smile :)

As you can see, the UK paperback is just stunning.

Also, I love how there are sections to the book dedicated to a pa More...

There are three semi-short stories that are the main meat of this book. The stories are intertwined by the prologue and the epilogue of three french tutors. The stories involve each of the tutors and their students as they spend a day in Paris together.

The French tutors names are Nico, Phillipe, and Chantal. Each of them have very distinct and different personalities. So do their students. I wouldn't say that the book was plot heavy. There was a plot, but it's actually not the main focus of the More...

This is a delightful little novel about love and Paris.
It is structured around three private French tutors and their clients, on a single day in Paris.
It begins with the three tutors meeting before going off on their teaching tasks for the day. We how they interact with each other, and get a taste of their characters.
We then move to each tutor with their client. Nico, a man in his early thirties, tutoring and about to publish his first collection of poetry has a client who is a young American F More...

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman is a novel set in Paris, one of my favorite settings for a story. Three French tutors meet at a café each day when they finish giving individual French lessons to tourists who pay an agency to hire a French tutor. Three tutors, two men, Nico and Phillipe, one woman, Chantel, are involved with each other and this time, unusually, they are also entangled with their students. Each of these stories is an amuse-bouche that is as delicious as any little appetizer you ma More...

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman
C’est l’amour
A single day in Paris changes the lives of three Americans as they each set off to explore the city with a different French tutor, learning about language, love, and loss as their lives intersect in surprising ways. Ellen Sussman’s novel French Lessons is a book for those who love movies like Love Actually and Valentine’s Day.
The three Americans traveling through their day are a diverse lot—there’s French teacher Josie with her secret sorrow, Riley, a More...

IQ "Young love teaches you how to love. You're so lucky. Most of us spend years trying to learn the ways of love." Chantal, pg. 16

I think I expected this book to be "deeper" than it was, it was really more about lust and its effects. Not that that's a problem but I was surprised by the content. I liked the explorations of Paris, especially because I felt like this book offered a grittier, less idealistic view of the French people. I did wish the book was more the tutors, the Americans or both. More...

i loved this book. i actually read it in one day! side note, it made me want to learn french, that's for sure!
this book is all about the search for love. love can be disguised as different things, but in the end, it's about the "kind of love which must feel like coming home." that's true love. this book was really about chantal and nico's journey to find love in each other. they learned from others' experiences and were tempted by a fleeting kind of love, but in the end, they knew they only want More...

After reading "The Paris Wife," I was a little tired of the topic of infidelity. And here I got more of it. An underwhelming story of three different French tutor/student pairs as they spend the day together in Paris. Personally, I cannot relate to viewing other people with such low regard as to use them either for sex or abuse my spouse by breaking my marital vows. Therefore, I cannot relate to most of the characters in this book. The student/tutor pairs that don't jump into bed with each other More...

I loved the format of this book. A group of French tutors meet to chat about their students and the book is split among their stories, so it is divided into thirds and is more like reading three different stories in one book. Which I love because if something is annoying me, it means it's not going to last very long. But luckily, I enjoyed all of the stories very much. There is also sexual tension amongst the tutors as well, which seeped into all the stories, but didn't effect them too much as t More...

I liked this book. I feel like the characters spoke to me (except for the one married to the actress-forgot his name). They just seem so lost and confused like what they planned for their lives didn't work out and now they're not sure what to do. I feel like I'm at a similar stage in my life and can relate. Maybe if I wasn't in the same funk a lot of the characters were in then I wouldn't have liked it as well. I liked that at the end some of the characters received some closure while others did More...

During the course of one eventful, enlightening day in Paris, three French tutors and their students each reach a turning point in their lives. The tutors are Nico, Chantal, and Philippe. Nico loves Chantal, and she loves Philippe, who loves whomever he is in bed with at the moment. Chantal and Philippe have been together, though not exclusively on his part, for a year. When Chantal can no longer tolerate Philippe's sexual wanderings, she spends one night with the smitten Nico. The one day in wh More...

French Lessons was a welcome surprise.

Encompassing the lives of six people (three French, three American), French Lessons focuses on the impact of strangers and the impact of one very important day.

Ellen Sussman got the idea for French Lessons from her husband. Working in Paris on their anniversary, Sussman bought her husband lessons with a French tutor to keep him occupied and interested. The tutor turned out to be beautiful. The idea for her story was born.

But French Lessons doesn’t focus on l More...

I received French Lessons in the mail and finished it the same day. I became enamored with Sussman's description of Paris life and quickly transported myself into the city of love. The novel is separated into four separate stories: the tutors and the stories between the tutors and the Americans they are tutoring. The tutors kick off the novel and I became intrigued because I wanted to know how these three radically different people tutored. I think the first story between Nico and Josie is by fa More...

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Well...I don't really know where to begin with this one. There's three different stories in one. The beginning starts off with three french tutors in Paris who are about to embark on a day of work. These three tutors are involved in a love triangle. After this is established there are three separate stories, one involving each, which explains their day.

Each story is filled with sex. Basically the book is kind of raunchy. But it was also depressing. Each person learns somet More...

Here’s my tip: read French Lessons by Ellen Sussman while sitting in a cafe having a chocolate croissant and good coffee. That’s the easiest and fastest way to transport yourself to Paris this summer.

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman delivers Paris in her myriad facets, conjuring freshly baked pain au chocolat, strolling by the Seine, and the thrill of a romantic dalliance. This is Paris through the eyes of three Americans at a crossroads in their lives, who, in discovering Paris, rediscover thems More...

I was super-excited to receive French Lessons in the mail. “Ah,” thought I, “a book about Paris. The perfect, bookish way to release post-school year stress.” Sadly, I was disappointed. Disappointed to the point of barely forcing myself to finish it.

Sussman’s novel is framed around three French tutors working for an agency. Involved in their own little love triangle, the French tutors meet clients during the day, teach them a little (very little) French, and then rendez-vous for drinks. On this More...

This book sure had quite a lot of adultery in it, fun! We started off with Nico and Josie, these two were my favorite story. Josie was grieving the loss of her married lover and Nico was helping her get through the process. I liked the way this section flowed, it moved quickly and the flashbacks were scattered through nicely.

Riley and Phillipe were the second section, and I thought Phillipe was so sketchy and gross. Why would Riley go back to his place! She was married with two children, yet we More...

The story takes place over a single day in Paris and revolves around six people. The prologue introduces the reader to three French tutors; Nico, Philippe and Chantal. The tutors are three very different people who are linked by not just their jobs, but through their mixed-up personal lives too.
The story is then split into three separate sections. In the first, the reader follows Nico and his pupil Josie, we then accompany Philippe and Riley and finally Chantal and Jeremy.
The three couples wand More...

French Lessons chronicles a day in the life of three French language tutors in Paris and the students they have for the day.
Josie is a French teacher herself, on a Parisian vacation that she had meant to take with her married lover. She is grieving his death and trying to find herself.
Riley is an expat wife with two small children, struggling with the collapse of her marriage and the recent discovery of her mother's cancer.
Jeremy is in Paris with his movie star wife as she shoots a movie, but i More...

I would like to preface my review with this: I don't love books with gratuitous, descriptive sex scenes; it tends to lower the book's value in my estimation and they are intended for a different kind of audience than my profile. In all of the vignettes there are explicit, vivid sex scenes which seemed too over the top, and had something been left for the imagination I feel it would have been more appropriate, but the scenes were short so I paid little attention to them.

Reading this book is a pl More...

French Lessons is set in Paris, it follows three French tutors and their American students during the course of one day. The story begins with the tutors- Nico; a poet who thinks he is in love with Chantal; Phillippe, a bad boy and flirt who plays at being Chantal's boyfriend; and Chantal, a beautiful woman looking for true love. Nico spends the day with Josie who flees to Paris after losing her lover in a plane crash. Phillippe teaches Riley, a lonely housewife trying to get used to living in P More...

This is a 1.5 star book, I didn't actually HATE it, so I had to go with two. What the hell? As with many of the reviewers I read, I had high hopes for this novel about three tutors individually taking their students out for a day in Paris. How could that possibly be boring?! But these are not characters, they are caricatures (perhaps that is the point?):the over-sexed young Frenchman, the sensitive young Frenchman and the nubile yet ill-treated (ill-cheated:)) Frenchwoman as tutors paired with t More...

This is a Reading Good Books review.

Paris. The city of sex. The city of clandestine affairs. Basically, this whole book has “clandestine affairs” as a common theme. And Paris.

The book is about three Americans in Paris and their respective French tutors. They are in Paris for different reasons. And all of them are looking to find themselves in the alluring and romantic city of lights. It starts with Josie and her charming teacher Nico, looking to heal a broken heart. Nico helps her find that clo More...

I won this book from Goodreads and was excited to start reading. I love to travel and imagined being transported to Paris and feeling the flavor of the city and it's people.

This book is not that. Pretty much, this book is all about perpetuating the stereotype that the French are only about sex. Someone was always cheating on someone, if they weren't having sex, they were thinking about sex. I mean in the museums, at the Eiffel Tower, it was all about sex. Sure, some romantic interludes make a bo More...

French Lessons is set over the course of a single day, with a section for each tutor/student pairing. I wasn't sure how such a tiny time frame would work for an entire novel but it did and it had a surprising fast pace instead of being packed with simple, mundane activities.

With the separate sections and the fact that the students never meet, it felt a bit like three short stories, anchored together by the three tutors and the events of the day. Each pair end up watching the film shoot at the ri More...

French Lessons follows three french tutors as they embark on a day of one on one tutoring with their American students in Paris.

Nico meets Josie a woman who is grieving for a love that she can’t own up to and hiding from a life full of secrets.

Philippe meets Riley, who to the outside world has it all, the successful husband, two children and the beautiful city of Paris on her doorstep.
But in reality every morning Riley wakes up feeling lonely in a life that she thought was full of possibilities. More...

A passionate day in the life of three French language tutors-for-hire made me fall in love with Paris from afar, and wish to travel there. I can't wait to eat in a sidewalk cafe, drink elegant coffee, visit patisseries, and see the sights! There is a lot focus on love, sex, and romance, including some graphic language, so if that's not your cup of tea, then it may not be for you. It's not usually my kind of book either, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. There are essentially three di More...

This was an ARC that I won from goodreads - thanks so much!

This was a compilation of 3 stories set in Paris. Three people/friends/lovers employed as private French tutors and their American students enjoy the sights and sensuality of Paris.

The first story tells us of a young woman who was a French tutor in the US who comes to Paris after her married lover dies. She meets her tutor, Nico, who is a romantic, pining sort of guy. They trade secrets and thoughts of love. Although her story is sad, I More...

I was fortunate to win this book through the Goodreads Advance Reader's Giveaway.

When I was a little girl, I used to watch my Grandma read her books in her chair with *that* smile on her face. Always one of those cheesy Fabio-covered romance novels. It wasn't until I was quite a bit older and picked up one of those books to see the words "fiery loins" and "soft flesh" that I realized, partly in horror, GRANDMA?!@#. My sweet, innocent grandma...not so much. Fabio-like romance novels read: sex, se More...