Maybe in Paris
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Keira Braidwood lands in Paris with her autistic brother, Levi, and high hopes. Levi has just survived a suicide attempt and months in the psych ward—he’s ready for a dose of the wider world. Unlike their helicopter mom and the doctors who hover over Levi, Keira doesn’t think Levi’s certifiable. He’s just . . . quirky. Always has been.
Those quirks quickly begin to spoil the trip. Keira wants to traipse all over Europe; Levi barely wants to leave their grubby hotel room. She wants to dine on the world’s cuisine; he only wants fast food. Levi is one giant temper tantrum, and Keira’s ready to pull out her own hair.
She finally finds the adventure she craves in Gable, a hot Scottish bass player, but while Keira flirts in the Paris Catacombs, Levi’s mental health breaks. He disappears from their hotel room and Keira realizes, too late, that her brother is sicker than she was willing to believe. To bring him home safe, Keira must tear down the wall that Levi’s sickness and her own guilt have built between them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Keira Braidwood's prom night is a disaster: Jacques, the snide French exchange student she's infatuated with, mocks her and hooks up with another girl at the dance. But this drama pales next to the attempted suicide of her younger brother, Levi, the next morning, after which he is diagnosed with autism and admitted to a treatment center. Struggling with guilt that she and Levi, once inseparable, have grown apart, Keira invites him to accompany her to Paris: "Maybe if sees the world, sees everything it has to offer in a brand-new corner of it, he'll want to stay in it." Keira's romantic observations of Paris, countered by Levi's cynicism, and their conversations bring their personalities into focus in Christiansen's debut novel. But despite Keira's obvious concern for her brother, she often comes across as self-centered ("How could he want to leave me?" she wonders after the suicide attempt), and the siblings being allowed to travel to France on their own after so much upheaval defies believability, despite some late-in-the-novel revelations. Ages 12 up.
