Wow. I love this one. So Hannibal is my favorite male author. The way he handles his plots and characters ALWAYS has me on the edge of my seat. It rarely takes me more than two days to finish a book by him. Needless to say, I had great expectations for The Paris Betrayal.
My family and I just got back from a month long trip to Florida and there we watched an FBI show almost every evening. On the plan home I watched the movie Tenet, and I started this book almost as soon as we had unpacked. So my suspense/special agent vibe was on high alert. Let’s go with the review!
The Characters
For spoilers sake I’ll spare you details on some of the characters. However? The development of Clara’s character was beautiful. I was kinda mad at the beginning, but very satisfied with it at the end.
Ben himself was…. hard. I loved the guy and his fight-till-I’m-dead attitude. I admired that with all of me. But the author did such a good job pulling the reader (me) into the story and feeling everything that Ben was going through and still fighting that now that I’m done my brain is exhausted and I need a mental break 😂😂😂
I loved Hale’s voice in Ben’s head all the time, and I would have trusted Sensen with my life even in Ben’s shoes. I don’t know why
The Plot
My word I was guessing EVERY second of the plot. I didn’t know what was going to happen and how it was going to end even to the last page of the story. The suspense, the fighting scenes, the description of how Ben fought and looked and searched and never gave up even to the last beat of his heart when everybody else had turned on him. So well done. And so complex there’s no way to even try and summarise it to a review.
The Content
There wasn’t any sexual content. Two brief kisses. There was no bad language. There was a fair amount of violence and graphic scenes, blood, shooting, being shot, a debilitating disease, burning a body, and also infecting people with the said disease (bio weapon). All in all very little to be concerned with unless you are very sensitive to blood/fighting scenes in which case I’m going to guess this isnt your typical genre and avoiding this story will not be a problem.
Additional Notes:
There were certain parts to the story where I was shaking my head, I didn’t agree with what was happening, or I didn’t understand why the author played it out the way he did. The Director and Jupiter and them always talking about having faith in the Company was way too much of an idol type theme for me. But as an author I always read author notes at the end of the book and BOY was I rewarded with such a treat! Every single one of my concerns was vaporised when the author explained where his topic and inspiration came from and why he wrote the story the way that he did. I don’t want to share the spoilers here but thinking back on the story with this new light I keep finding all the nuggets of parallels and I’m having such a little party in my head.
Especially the scene where he finally comes across the Director and cries “I deserve better!” And I’d better stop before I start spilling spoilers.
One more thing I want to say is thank you so much to Mr. Hannibal. He said that this story was almost complete when the COVID pandemic hit the world, and he had to adjust this story to make it work. As an author, I know that sinking feeling in your chest when the story you’ve spent so many hours writing needs to be completely redone as many times to make sure it’s consistent with a new topic. So THANK you Mr. Hannibal for not giving up and for handling this topic very well.
Also thank you to the Publisher for a copy of this book. A positive review was not required and all opinions are my own.
FIVE STARS!
Favorite quote:
“Stop asking what you deserve, Ben. Try asking, what is my purpose?”
~Ha-eun~ The Paris Betrayal
I’m so glad to be back. Missed you all! If you want to read more reviews you can do so here. And I’ll be posting something special tomorrow. Stick around!
Awesome review, Libby, thank you!