Ponder: The Last Dress from Paris

The Last Dress from Paris by Jade Beer ©2022 tells the parallel tales of two main female characters, Alice and Lucille. In Paris in 1952, Alice, the wife of the British ambassador to France, lives in a life showered with luxuries and haute couture fashions by famous designer Christian Dior. In London in 2017, Lucille is asked by her grandmother Sylvie to go to Paris and bring back a specific Christian Dior dress from the 1950's. There is mystery surrounding this particular dress and a collection of notes takes the reader on an adventure where not one, but eight, Dior dresses are involved. These clues piqued my interest.

The mystery and adventures aspect of this book's description is what enticed me to read it and I was not disappointed in that respect. As a quilter, having somewhat of a love affair of my own with fabrics, I thought the high fashion Dior aspects could provide an interesting backdrop, which it did in a secondary sense; learning the construction of some of these dresses was engaging. The setting of Paris is alluring, but having never been there myself, it neither enhanced nor diminished the novel for me. A torrid love affair between Alice and a dashing young artist, fueled by the cliché lack of attention and love from Alice's husband, securely establishes the plot and further retained my interest.  Eight notes associated with eight dresses are the main clues, introduced in Chapter 3. I bookmarked them so I could refer back and understand the dresses in context as I read on and unraveled the mystery.

• "I saw something different in you."
• "Meet me tomorrow. I'll wait all day if I have to."
• "I need you as much as you need me."
• "Even if you never let me touch you, this is enough."
• "Try to love me a little because I already love you too much."
• The kiss that saved me...
• "I can make all this go away."
• I continue to hope.

Each strong women character in this book strives to make her life what she wants. The thought processes and emotions of these women are well portrayed. Sadly the male characters are not.  The men in the novel are weak as characters as well as in character. In the two cases of Alice's husband and Alice's lover, they each make abrupt character changes and the reason is left unexplained and unjustified. Shortly after completing The Last Dress from Paris I saw the most recent 2022 remake of the movie Lady Chatterly's Lover, (and liked how it was portrayed). I was however, struck by the all too familiar theme of a wife justifying her affair due to an unfulfilling husband. In The Last Dress from Paris thankfully there was an interesting backstory to engage the reader more than relying on a few scattered, subtle, non-explicit, sex scenes.

This book was slow moving at first but then picked up. I felt the feminism triteness was overplayed a bit, but the mystery aspect overcame this shortcoming. The tendency of recent novels to rely on dual timelines did annoy me, though. I was sorely tempted to read all the odd chapters and then all the even chapters so as to get a continuous storyline for Alice or Lucille. Despite these shortcomings, I rate The Last Dress from Paris 4 stars. I enjoyed it, especially a couple surprises near the end.

★★★★☆ Really good; maybe only one weak aspect or limited audience