Wow, I loved the last 20 percent of the book, the story was unfolding faster, and much more exciting than the first part of the book. I also was not expecting the twist that happened.

I liked the unique storyline and the author’s note sharing how she came to this unexplored WWII story.

I’m not exactly sure why I couldn’t get into the first half of the book, I think for me, I was slow leaving me a little confused. I couldn’t tell who the main characters were or what & how they were going to tie together.

Overall, I think WWII fans will enjoy this book.

Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff is a beautifully crafted and emotionally resonant novel that immersed me in the complexities of love and loss during one of the most tumultuous periods in history. The author skillfully intertwines the personal struggles of her characters with the broader backdrop of World War II, creating a rich tapestry of human experience that is both heart-wrenching and uplifting.

Ms. Jenoff tells her story in dual timelines--the start of WWII and 1953-- and in dual narration by the protagonists, Helaine, a Jew in WWII Paris, and Louise, a Red Cross worker during the war. Their journeys take readers from the tranquil streets of Paris to the chaos of war-torn Europe and back. Ms. Jenoff’s descriptive prose allows readers to feel the palpable energy of bustling cafes, the serene beauty of the Seine, and even the oppressive shadows that war casts over the vibrant streets. I felt as if I was walking alongside both Helaine and Louise.

Ms. Jenoff beautifully captures the essence of friendship, family, and romantic relationships that bloom even in the darkest of times, highlighting how these connections can provide strength and solace. The themes of resilience and hope resonate strongly throughout the novel. It serves as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming challenges. Ms. Jenoff has delivered a heartfelt journey that not only entertains but also invites reflection on the complexity of human emotions and the enduring power of love in the face of adversity.

I had never even read the description of the book before requesting it. Pam Jenoff never lets me down. She is one of my favorite historical fiction writers. Last Twilight in Paris is well-written and has multi-dimensional characters. Two storylines tie into the mystery of a found bracelet, which weaves the storylines and leaves no loose threads. I highly recommend this beautiful story. The ending was superb.

I usually struggle reading historical fiction stories but as I read the summary I was intrigued by the hunt for the people with the necklace. Beginning third and end third was really good and connected well. The middle third just dragged and dragged and I almost did not finish.

For some reason, I've never read books by Pam Jenoff. Apparently, I've been missing out. I really enjoyed this book. The pacing was excellent. It never felt slow. She had two heroines and went through several different time periods with them. It was well-crafted and suspenseful. It did a great job of telling the story of a forgotten piece of French WWII history.

Such a wonderful book! I love Pam Jenoff’s WWII historical fiction novels but this story is unique and hooked me from the very beginning.

The story is centered on two main female characters, Louise and Helaine. Helaine is the daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman who finds herself falling in love with a gifted cellist. When the Germans come to France, Helaine is imprisoned in the Lévitan department store where the workers must prepare looted items from wealthy Jewish families to sell to Germans.

Louise is an English Red Cross worker who signs up to deliver aid. When her assignment takes her behind lines, she travels with her actress friend, Franny, to Germany only to realize that her friend is mixed up in a high-stakes mission that could get them killed. When an inexplicable tragedy occurs, Louise is left reaching for answers.

As an avid reader of WWII books, I was interested to find this little nugget of history about a department store turned into a camp for elite Jewish members of society that were forced to sort through looted treasures. This book was a fascinating read!

Trigger warnings: suggestive sexual content, war, death

Many thanks to the author and NetGalley for the advanced copy. This review is voluntary and all thoughts are my own.

This was a dual timeline historical fiction story featuring a chronically ill/disabled Jewish woman during WWII and a non-Jewish woman in the 1950s whose lives intertwine thanks to a mysterious necklace that she uses to track down the former owner.

Moving, heartfelt and great on audio, this was an important look at Jewish life during WWII and highly recommended for fans of Kelly Rimmer or Kristin Harmel. While it wasn't my favorite by Pan Jenoff it is definitely still worth picking up! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

Wow, this was a beautifully written story. I loved the multiple perspectives in this novel and how they all came together at the end. I loved that the author brought to light an unknown history of WWII - the story of the furniture store Levitan where Jews imprisoned and sort through possessions belonging to Jews for German officers. This novel was beautifully written. Highly recommend.

The author clearly put a lot of time and research into this one, and it is apparent throughout that she knows her stuff. The characters were easy to become invested in. I loved the dual timelines and viewpoints. This was a robust historical fiction with spectacular writing.

I loved this book! Pen Jenoff is such an incredible writer. This book was so captivating, it pulled me into the story of these two women and I loved how it had the dual timeline. Switching between during the war and after was an incredible idea that just left me wanting to keep reading the story. I honestly think this author is going to become a new auto-buy author for me because this is the second book I’ve read that I have just loved. This was such an easy book to get lost in the pages and when I was reading, I felt like I was right there along side the characters. With all the twists that happened, I loved how it ended and it was such a magical but heartbreaking read. If you love WWII historical fiction, then read this one!

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing and Net Galley for the chance to read and review this book. All opinions expressed are my own.
This is the first book I have read by this author, and I thought she did a tremendous job researching and presenting a wartime story full of heart and mystery. In 1953 London, Louise finds a necklace in a secondhand shop. The necklace seems familiar to her. She decides to investigate the necklace and how it relates to the past. Her quest leads her to Levitan, a department store that was used as a Nazi Prison during the war. It also leads to one of the prisoners, Helaine. This was an exciting book, with lots of twists and turns. I encourage you to read it if you like wartime mysteries!

Louise finds a necklace she remembers from the war - given to her friend at a camp just before her death. Louise wants to find out what the necklace is and if it’s connected to her friend’s death.

This one captured (in fiction) a bit of history I didn’t know about. I wasn’t aware that Jewish prisoners had been held in a former store - in real life it was a furniture store. The story was interesting. One component of the ending felt a little silly, but overall I enjoyed this one.

Louise is still acclimating to her life in London after the war; her husband was soldier abd has PTSD and she was part of the Red Cross and traveled to Paris.  One day she happens upon a necklace that is identical to one she saw a POW hand to her friend during the war.  Since her friend was killed right after receiving the necklace (and the necklace went missing) Louise feels compelled to learn about its owner and backstory.  She travels back to Paris and revisits her old boss and love interest Ian from the Red Cross to help her learn more.  While investigating, the reader learns about yet another chapter in the dark story of the Nazi's goal to annihilate the Jews, Levitan prison.  

While this one started a bit slow, I had the audiobook which helped get over the hump and I'm so glad that I did because the remainder of the book was so worthwhile (I then half listened and half read and through the narrator was excellent).  It is rare that I learn something about the Holocaust, but Jenoff was able to uncover a new story.  One of my favorite elements of fiction is when the author starts with seemingly unconnected characters and then through the narrative weaves their story into one cohesive one, this novel did that and it worked really well.  I'm pretty picky about WWII novels at this point since there are so many out there so I'm always impressed when a new story.

Thank you to Park Row and NetGalley for the ARC to review

This book kept my attention but I did skim it at times. The premise for both timelines was very interesting, but the characters seemed too naive. Recommend this book if you are really interested in WWII Paris history. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. #sponsored

(4.25 stars)
You can always count on Pam Jenoff to write historical fiction that is not only a page-turner, but also highlights a piece of history not known widely. In Last Twilight in Paris, Jenoff tells the story of how the N*zis used a former furniture store in the middle of Paris as a prison camp. They brought goods stolen from the Jewish people of Paris - china, silver, furniture, you name it - to Levitan and made their prisoners sort, clean, and display the goods in order to sell them to high-ranking German officers, to be shipped home to their families. Diabolical.

Of course, Jenoff gives us this information while also giving us a rollicking good story. The timeline and location shift back and forth between wartime in France and 1953 in England and France. We have two main female characters. Louise is English; she volunteered for the International Red Cross, delivering care packages to prisoner of war camps behind enemy lines. The other is Helaine, a young Parisian woman from a prominent Jewish family.

Another thing Jenoff showcases is the ineffectiveness (that’s a nice word) of the International Red Cross in “inspecting” prisoner of war camps and concentration camps. (Just the same today - they never visited any of the hostages held in Gaza, but they were there to receive them as they were released.) In Last Twilight in Paris, Louise does her very best to deliver care packages to prisoners of war. She is frustrated at not being able to do more than the Germans begrudgingly allow.

In 1953, Louise comes across a “broken heart” or Mizpah necklace in a second-hand shop she works at, near Oxford. (It’s the kind of thing where one person has one half of the heart and someone else has the other half.) She is sure that she has seen this very necklace before - when she was at the POW camp in Germany. This sets off a search to find out more about the necklace and where it came from, as the crate she found it in bore the name of the French store, Levitan. Books like these depend on very improbable (but not impossible) coincidences, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book.

I bounced between the digital version of the story and the audiobook, which was beautifully narrated by the fabulous Thérèse Plummer and Saskia Maarleveld.

Thank you to Park Row and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book and to Harlequin Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook. All opinions are my own.

I always enjoy a historical fiction that deals with something I know very little about and has me wanting to research a particular subject after finishing the book. This happened with this book because I wanted to read more about both Levitan and how the Red Cross went behind enemy lines. I also enjoyed how post war relationships were portrayed with Louise and Joe as they try to get along with all the changes the post-war era has brought both to their relationship and themselves as individuals.

Most of the reviews I've seen of this book are glowing so I'm not entirely sure this author is for me as for quite a good bit of the story I was seriously considering DNFing this book. I never really cared for either of the main characters. I found the pace for the first bit of the book very slow and Louise's reaction to the necklace feels a bit overblown until close to the end of the book.

Once I was pulled into the story I did fly through the book. While Helaine was impossibly naive for most of the story I was sympathetic to her and understood why she was the way she was even though I wanted to shake her. I'm not sure I ever warmed to Louise and for quite awhile I couldn't comprehend why tracing the origin of this necklace she saw once during the war was so important. I was happy with the ending and felt that most of the points were nicely resolved and I liked the path that the characters were beginning.

Despite a first half that didn't really work for me I did end up enjoying this book overall. I will probably try another book by this author and I definitely want to research a number of the history that was explored in the book - especially Levitan.

This historical fiction book is set during World War II and follows the story of two women, Helaine and Louise. The narrative is told through two points of view and alternates between the present and the past.

The story is filled with heartbreak, a love story, resilience, and hope. "Twilight in Paris" offers a compelling blend of mystery and historical fiction. It portrays how these two young women faced unimaginable challenges and discovered a strength they never knew they possessed.

Really enjoyed this one and highly recommend to reading! Th am you @htp_hive for the gifted ARC💙.

What can I say that hasn’t already been said in the other amazing reviews? There is so much about WWII history that I never knew about. Putting together a narrative with two stories and their double timelines is a feat the author pulled off brilliantly! The main characters Helaine and Louise were both relatable and believable. I was shocked to learn that close to eight hundred prisoners were kept in Levitan (department store in Paris) for varying amounts of time while it was being operated by the Germans.

Although there are so many historical fiction novels written about this time period, I find that this one was sensitively written and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction.

London, 1953. Louise Burns is a married woman whose husband, Joe, a veteran, is haunted by nightmares of the war. Louise's post-war life has not met her expectations as she struggles to adapt as a wife and mother of two. She works part-time in a second-hand shop, where she discovers a necklace bearing the name of a luxury Parisian store. The necklace sparks a memory from her time as a British Red Cross volunteer in occupied France and Germany, where her friend Franny died under mysterious circumstances. Undeterred by her former Red Cross boss's dismissiveness, Louise travels to Paris to uncover the necklace's origins and its connection to her past. The narrative unfolds through a dual timeline, told from the perspectives of Louise and Helaine Weil, a young Jewish woman who was imprisoned in the Lévitan department store, which the Nazis used for sinister purposes. The mysterious link between the necklace and the characters' experiences is a powerful theme that inspires reflection on the human spirit's capacity for resilience and hope. As the two stories intersect, the characters' struggles and triumphs will leave you in awe of the strength of the human heart. Pam Jenoff's exceptional writing has crafted an eye-opening narrative that will linger long after the final page, inspiring courage in the face of adversity and faith in the transformative power of hope. This book is a testament to the human spirit's capacity for resilience and the power of hope, highly recommended for its thought-provoking and awe-inspiring storytelling.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC! I've really enjoyed Jenoff's past novels and Last Twilight in Paris is no exception. I appreciated that the time jump between the two perspectives was much shorter than most WW2 novels and that we were seeing the war from two very different perspectives rather than the typical war POV and was not around during the war POV. I definitely learned about something new (Levitan as a camp) in this and would recommend to anyone looking for a good historical fiction novel!