PARIS ON REPEAT

A self-absorbed, risk-averse teen with a secret crush finds herself reliving the last day of a class trip to Paris.

Atop the Eiffel Tower, Eve, 14, summons the nerve to tell Jace she likes him only to discover him kissing her best friend, Reggie. Eve witnesses pretty, popular Reggie buy a love lock to seal her romance with Jace from a mysterious palm reader, who gives Eve a key and cryptic advice. Later, Eve uses her key to open the lock and hurls it in the Seine. Next morning, she awakens to relive the awful day, the first of many repeats that lead her to focus on what she has power to change, including her reaction to her parents’ imminent divorce. As each iteration brings new developments and oracular pronouncements from the palm reader, Eve discovers she’s not the only one reliving that day. Borrowing a popular plot device familiar from the film Groundhog Day (1993) and studded with Parisian tourist-attraction references, the novel fails to persuade. Eve and the challenges she must overcome—parental divorce, unfamiliar foods, jealousy, and lack of empathy—are real but universal, too commonplace to merit occult intervention, the stakes too low to justify the effort. Repetition reinforces both the book’s structural weaknesses and Eve’s character flaws. Eve appears white; while a few names and references to skin color and/or hairstyle imply diversity, characters are largely interchangeable. A concluding paragraph hints at a sequel set in Rome.

An overworn concept ineptly executed.