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    The Lost Girls Of Paris
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    The Lost Girls Of Paris
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    The Lost Girls Of Paris
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Lost Girls Of Paris

    Written by Pam Jenoff

    Narrated by Candace Thaxton, Elizabeth Knowelden and Henrietta Meire

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    ‘A gripping tale’ MY WEEKLY
    ‘Thrilling’ WOMAN
    ‘A truly gripping read of mystery, love and heroism’ FROST MAGAZINE

    The Lost Girls of Paris is an emotional story of friendship and betrayal during the second world war, inspired by true events – from the international bestseller Pam Jenoff.

    1940s. With the world at war, Eleanor Trigg leads a mysterious ring of female secret agents in London. Twelve of these women are sent to aid the resistance.

    They never return home.

    1946. Passing through Grand Central Station, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. The case is filled with a dozen photographs, each of a different woman.

    Setting out to find the women behind the pictures, Grace is drawn into the mystery of the lost girls of Paris. And as she delves deeper into the secrets of the past, she uncovers a story of fierce friendship, unthinkable bravery – and, ultimately, the worst kind of betrayal.

    Praise for The Lost Girls of Paris:

    ‘Fraught with danger, filled with mystery, and meticulously researched, The Lost Girls of Paris is a fascinating tale of the hidden women who helped to win the war.’ Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

    ‘A smart, suspenseful, and morally complicated spy novel for our time. Eleanor Trigg and her girls are every bit as human as they are brave. I couldn’t put this down.’ Jessica Shattuck, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle

    ‘Pam Jenoff's meticulous research and gorgeous historical world-building lift her books to must-buy status. An intriguing mystery and a captivating heroine make The Lost Girls of Paris a read to savor!’ Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network

    Praise for Pam Jenoff:

    ‘Wonderfully compelling… The story grips from the very first page, and the atmosphere of the circus is entrancing – you feel all the terror and thrill of the flying trapeze.’ Margaret Leroy, author of The Soldier’s Wife

    ‘Secrets, lies, treachery, and passion…I read this novel in a headlong rush.’ Christina Barker Kline, #1 bestselling author of Orphan Train

    ‘A thrilling, yet heart-breaking story of life and love, heroism and sacrifice in wartime Europe’ My Weekly

    ‘This is a book not to be missed’ Melanie Benjamin, bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife

    ‘Jenoff has written a tribute to the human spirit that soars in the midst of epic despair…’ NPR

    ‘Jenoff’s prose is evocative and compelling’ The Globe and Mail

    ‘An emotional tale of survival and courage during a difficult time in Europe.’ Suzy Approved Book Reviews

    ‘Jenoff keeps readers on their toes with the numerous twists and turns… as well as the emotional peaks and valleys that had me reaching for tissues more than once.’ Romance Dish

    ‘THE ORPHAN’S TALE takes us on a heartbreaking, hopeful, touching and emotional journey; one that is not to be missed.’ Jennifer Blankfein

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateJan 29, 2019
    ISBN9780263267785
    Unavailable
    The Lost Girls Of Paris
    Author

    Pam Jenoff

    Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia. Upon receiving her masters in history from Cambridge, she accepted an appointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The position provided a unique opportunity to witness and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government, including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and attending ceremonies to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II at sites such as Bastogne and Corregidor. Following her work at the Pentagon, Pam moved to the State Department. In 1996 she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland. It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland, Pam developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community. Pam is the author of The Kommandant's Girl, which was an international bestseller and nominated for a Quill award, as well as The Winter Guest, The Diplomat's Wife, The Ambassador’s Daughter, Almost Home, A Hidden Affair and The Things We Cherished. She also authored a short story in the anthology Grand Central: Original Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three children.

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    Reviews for The Lost Girls Of Paris

    4/5

    411 ratings65 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The Lost Paris Girls is a book that takes place in two different times; 1946 New York and during WWII in London and various locations in France. Grace works for an immigration lawyer in New York and is late for work one day due to a traffic accident. She ducks through Grand Central Station and stumble on a suitcase left under a bench. For reasons I never could fathom she decides to open it, look through it and actually take an envelope from it. Other than to set up the rest of the book I cannot imagine someone just going through another person’s belongings like that. This plot point rather bothered me and I wondered if there weren’t a better way to set things in motion – but I am not a writer, only a reader.In the envelope are 12 photos of young ladies. The only identifier is a first name listed on the back of each. Grace did notice a name on the outside of the suitcase and soon realizes that the traffic accident that made her late for work was a pedestrian v. car and it involved the owner of the suitcase she found. In watching the news she learns that the owner has been killed!Eleanor Trigg works for the war department in London for the division that is placing spies in France. The network is experiencing problems and she puts forth the idea to send women into the field. She is charged with developing the program and starts recruiting women to train for the dangerous work. Most of them will be radio operators. One of them – Marie – is chosen due to her fluency in French. Marie has a small daughter and sees it as an opportunity to earn more money and make the world better for her child.The story is told in alternating chapters by these three women; Eleanor, an intelligent woman who emigrated to England with her mother to get away from Hitler. Marie, a young English woman who is looking to make a better world and Grace, looking for answers for questions she didn’t know she had.As with any book dealing with the horrors of war it’s hard to say it’s an enjoyable read. There is a very good story here though. One does have to suspend a certain amount of reality to let the book work though because some of it just doesn’t make sense – like my opening comment about why a stranger would open a suitcase and take something out of it. At least someone who is not a thief. Then there is Grace’s drive to figure out who the girls in the photos are and what happened to them. With everything else going on in her life why? But if you just let reality drop and just go with the flow you have a sort of WWII mystery light that makes for a very diverting read.Following Grace as she seeks answers, Marie’s exploits in France and Eleanor’s concern for her “girls” makes for good reading. The story solid and Grace is great heroine.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written, heart touching multi-layered stories, questioning the complexity of trust and loyalty. Absolutely reccommend it.
    • 1/5
      Monumentally disappointing...Grace is late for work one day and ends up having to walk through Grand Central Station. On her walkthrough she finds a briefcase and when she opens that she finds pictures of other women in uniform. She decides to take these pictures with her and embark on a journey to find who these women were/are.I can't help but wonder why this book has so many 5-star shining reviews. I'm a little curious to know if we are reading the same book here. Okay so let's talk...The Grace character in the story I found to be completely pointless. There was really no reason for her storyline whatsoever other than finding the briefcase. But then again the author just could have decided to write about Marie and Eleanor without Grace.Marie is so stupid for lack of a better way to put it. She is completely and without a doubt the worst person that Eleanor could have chosen for the job. Then when Julian hits the stage, she becomes even stupider. And one thing that I had a problem with Julian, he's the leader of a French rebel group and does not speak a lick of French.... W.T.F? But back to Marie, she is willing to give up King & country for Julian and makes the stupidest decisions that just about anybody I've read in a book makes. I was really hoping for a book that had 3 heroines. A book about their courage throughout the war but instead I got stupidity and a romance that seem to have been thrown in for no reason whatsoever because it doesn't make any sense in the story. I guess this book was a good idea to start with but the execution of it just completely fell flat. The writing wasn't even that great. I found it choppy and sloppy with lots of holes in the middle.Unpopular opinion but I personally cannot recommend this book. I know others have loved it dearly it seems but this is not a book that I would recommend to others.
    • 4/5
      1946 Manhattan. About friendship and courage centered around 3 women and a ring of female secret agents during WWII. Grace Healy finds an abandoned suitcase at Grand Central Terminal with photos of woman who never returned home from the war. Grace is determined to find out what happened to them. Inspired by true events. Thought-provoking and captivating. Told from 3 POV. Jenoff shows how government barters with individual‘s lives. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      I love WWII historical fiction. This was a good and intriguing book just not as good as some I have read.
    • 5/5
      London, England 1943: Eleanor Trigg is in charge of training women to be radio operators, among other things for the French Resistance. Marie is recruited because of her knowledge of the French language. Marie faces many dangers, once placed on French soil.New York 1946: Grace Healey, war widow cuts through Grand Central Station on her way to work. She notices a suitcase pushed under a bench. No one is around and thinking someone has lost it, Grace looks inside and finds photos of several young women with names written on them. Impulsively, she takes the photos. Who were these women? This sends Grace on a quest to find out who they were and what happened to them.
    • 3/5
      This was a great story at the beginning but I felt it spiraling to unrealistic outcomes.
    • 3/5
      While I enjoyed "The Lost Girls of Paris", I didn't like it as much as "The Orphan's Tale" by the same author. The start was slow and I almost gave up fairly early on, but I kept going. I am so glad I persevered because as the three stories converged the novel became far more interesting. I found the stories of the three women - Marie, Grace and Eleanor -intriguing and each time the novel move to another view point I was sorry to leave the previous one. These women were flawed and made some stupid choices/mistakes which frustrated me, especially Marie when she was in Occupied France. Also, the romances felt forced and weren't actually needed."The Lost Girls of Paris" was definitely not one of the best WWII novels I have ever read but, at the same time, it wasn't the worse either. An okay read.
    • 3/5
      After reading [A Woman of No Importance] and [Madam Fourcade's Secret War], this book was a real chore for me to get through. The two mentioned books were nonfiction about an American woman and a French woman who were key in the resistance.This book is a fictionalized take on the British women who served as civilians. It is poorly researched in terms of how the resistance worked. [The Alice Network], also fiction, does a better job with that. There are also little erroneous details that could have been avoided with some basic research. For example, one of the women learns the identity of a hit and run victim in a television broadcast in a cafe in New York....in 1945. Uhm....not likely, especially if you remember what early televisions looked like. Also there's an incident when one of the women is being prepared to be a courier for a package which was being "duct taped" to her....not likely. During WWII, it was more likely adhesive tape. There are also language lapses, where contemporary slang is used, not reflective of the era of the book.Finally, the author can't seem to help herself from writing a romance scenario for each of the main women when they encounter a man in power or authority. I would have gotten through the book quicker if there weren't so much eye rolling going on. I would not have finished it if it weren't a selection for July book group.
    • 5/5
      Story about women spying for Britain in France during WWII. The story moves between current day woman unearthing the story and events during the war. Well written and involving.
    • 3/5
      Story about women spying for Britain in France during WWII. The story moves between current day woman unearthing the story and events during the war. Interesting piece of history but fictional details are improbable at times.
    • 4/5
      I found the book interesting, although there was more detail than I needed. I am certain that everything was presented very thoughtfully and cleverly. I was mainly interested in the history of the World WarII spy procedure, and that kept my attention.
    • 3/5
      This novel is set during the final years of World War II and immediately after the war, and tells a story inspired by the true-life experiences of women serving as agent's in Britain's Special Operations Executive. The novel alternates perspectives among three different protagonists. Marie is a young woman recruited as an agent who is sent to work undercover in France not long before the D-Day invasions and has to overcome her inexperience and frequent changes of circumstance. Eleanor is the severe leader of the women's division in France, but her strictness is due to her desire to keep her agents safe both from the enemy and from the government leaders who have no faith in woman doing espionage. The final protagonist is Grace, a young widowed American who finds a suitcase in Grand Central Terminal and impulsively takes a dozen photographs of women who prove to be SOE agents. Grace's growing obsession with trying to find out who the women are and return the photos where they belong doesn't make much sense and is a drag on the book.  Marie's story is the most thrilling as she's actively working in France carrying out missions she wasn't trained for and hoping to avoid capture.  But Eleanor's story turns out to be the most profound as it deals with betrayal and personal tragedy.The book has a better premise than execution, but it was nevertheless an entertaining read.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely wonderful book. Very gripping and fast paced, caught me from beginning to end. I learned things I never imagined about world war two, this book has caused me to become obsessed with learning more about the brave women of the war, the unsung heroes. I have purchased several books both historical fiction and non fiction on the subject since reading this one. A very fascinating time in our history.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. The story unfolds with a women, Elenor Trigg forming a group of radio dispatchers during WWII that are all women. The are young, initially untrained and become very good at what they do. Their mission is compromised and becomes an obsession for another young women who lost her husband and is trying to find her own way in life. Her domineering and rich mother wants things for her that she does not. Will the mystery of the young radio operators be solved ?
    • 3/5
      Maybe my expectations had been set too high for this book. I found the storyline interesting, but felt that the writing was very simplistic and even trite at times. The book did spark my interest in learning more about these brave women spies.
    • 4/5
      The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff is WWII historical fiction set mainly in 1944-1946. It fictionalizes the lives of several women involved in the British war effort to send British female operatives who speak French into France to aid in the preparations for D-Day.It is told in the alternating voices of Marie, one of the operatives, Eleanor, the head of the program, and Grace, a person investigating the operation after the war.I enjoyed the storytelling, except for one main point which bothered me: Marie is repeatedly using the phrase "remembering her training, .." and then irritatingly going against it!
    • 2/5
      The book seemed promising. It was the kind of World War II suspense thriller I generally like. it was pretty standard however. It told the story of women recruited to serve as saboteurs and underground agents to fight against the Nazis. It did have interesting parts and moments of suspense. As this done in so many current works fiction, it had to storylines, when used to sort of provide entrée to the other. Both storylines also included a romantic sub text or chat a little to do with the overall story. Neither of The romantic sub-texts was believable. The storyline involving Grace attempting to find the story of the lost agents Was founded on an improbability, more Improbabilities followed as did many unlikely coincidences, and only distracted from the better part of the book. The other storyline, the one involving this stories of the female agents themselves, was far better, was also flawed by too many coincidents and serious improbabilities.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written historical fiction about a group of English women spies who put their lives on the line during WW II. Story is told in 2 time lines, only a few years apart. This story is about country, friendship and, most of all, the courage these women needed to go into enemy territory.

      Ms. Jenoff’s writing so vividly describes the war, it’s horrors and the aftermath. The friendship, determination and relentlessness of the characters came shining thru. As does her descriptions of London, New York and DC. Book was well researched.

      Highly recommend for fans of Historical Fiction. Fast read because you won’t be able to put it down!

      Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for this ARC. Opinion is mine alone!
    • 5/5
      Excellent historical fiction loosely based on the women in the SOE during WWII. I like Pam Jenoff's writing - including her great characters!
    • 5/5
      I thought this was a very interesting subject matter and the book was well written. I still need to Google how much of it is accurate. I know it's historical fiction, but I wonder if some of the things that happen in the book really happened or not. If you enjoy historical fiction, I definitely recommend this. Even if you don't typically, you might enjoy it, since this book is written in two different timelines going back and forth, so it's different from the typical historical fiction book.
    • 4/5
      Very similar to The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, and apparently based off of the same woman. It was a quick read, felt very powerful and honest.
    • 3/5
      Another WWII story featuring women working as spies through the underground resistance and facing untold dangers. This one starts after the war, when Grace Healey, taking a shortcut through Grand Central Station on her way to work, finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Curious, she opens the case and finds a packet of photos, each of the dozen pictures of a different woman. On impulse, she takes the photos. Later she learns the suitcase belonged to a woman named Eleanor Trigg, who died in a tragic auto accident. But Grace is determined to find out the women’s stories. There’s much to like about this tale, though I am frankly tired of the back-and-forth timelines used by so many writers these days. The author also uses different points of view from chapter to chapter: Grace, Eleanor, and Marie Roux (a young mother who was one of the couriers working with the resistance in occupied France).I could have done without the love interest and I thought some of Marie’s actions were inconsistent and downright stupid, given the circumstances. I thought Grace’s role was just padding. The story could easily have been told in a linear fashion with just Eleanor and Marie and would have been about 100 pages shorter. The character I liked the most was relegated to a rather small role: Josie. She’s a spitfire of a girl and very resourceful. I loved every scene she was a part of.The one that made the least sense to me was Julian – leader of a band of couriers, he’s in France but doesn’t speak French! Still, the story, which is partly based on true events, moved quickly and was engaging and interesting. A decent vacation read.
    • 4/5
      Well written fiction based on historical people and events. Shows a facet of WWII British efforts to help French partisans and prepare for the Allied landings in Normandy while also showing the deception and willingness to dispose of their own people that the highest British authorities went to thinking it would help their efforts. While maybe not as dastardly as what the Nazis did, it shows there are people on all sides of wars that are willing to sacrifice morality for an end justifies the means strategy.The book was compelling and hard to put down with great character development and very realistic backgrounds to bring out a feeling of the real events.
    • 3/5
      This story begins in NYC right after WWII with a young recent widow who stumbles upon a suitcase that intrigues her enough to open it up and take a stack of photos. The story jumps to the background of the girls that are in the photos and their stories. The history of these female SOE agents is interesting, but I feel the author veered too far away from what would of been a great historical fiction. We follow a story of the NYC woman too easily investigating a secret organization so soon after WWII and an only brief glimpse of an all too important role of the female SOE agents. As a reader our interests are peaked, but the characters lack the depth and story lacks the details to make it a higher recommendation.
    • 5/5
      Honestly can’t understand why there are so many low stars. I loved the mystery, strong women characters, and the history. PlqusbI enjoyed the author’s clear prose.
    • 4/5
      This is the 3rd book on this subject I've read this year and the 1nd book of fiction. The nonfiction (D Day Girls) was riveting as fact is nearly always stranger (more interesting)than fiction. The women and men who went on these missions in France are most certainly the unsung heroes of the storming the Normandy beaches.I can't put it down. Going to finish it tonight if it kills me!!
    • 2/5
      After reading three novels by Pam Jenoff, I’ve rather reluctantly come to the conclusion that the author is a romance novelist disguised as a writer of historical fiction. That kind of thing is far enough from my reading tastes that I’m not sure why it took me this long to figure it out. The romance around which The Winter Guest is built is integral to the plot, so I never wondered why it was there. But in rereading my 2011 review of The Things We Cherish, I see that the romance in the “present day” section of the novel struck me as a waste of precious pages that could have been far better used to advance her core plot. And now, there’s The Lost Girls of Paris, a novel that has an implausible romance as a key element of its 1944 section and an equally silly one in its 1946 section. But that’s hardly my main problem with Lost Girls. No, this one commits what I consider to be the mortal sin of novelists: Instead of showing me what happens in the book’s climax, Jenoff tells me what happened – all in a brief recap. A build-up of over 350 pages suddenly comes to a screeching halt in the book’s last two or three pages; that’s just not right, and I still feel cheated. So, what’s The Lost Girls of Paris about? Well, it does have the kind of plot that could have resulted in an excellent piece of historical fiction. Grace Healey, a young woman late for work, stumbles upon a lost suitcase in 1946 Grand Central Station. She knows she shouldn’t do it, but Grace indulges her curiosity long enough to open the suitcase for a quick look – and then walks away with the photographs of twelve young women she found inside.Grace, who lost her husband in an accident shortly before he was to be deployed to his WWII duty station, feels a kinship with this group of women that she can’t explain to herself. But it is only when she figures out who the suitcase belongs to, and that the twelve women were all deployed out of London into Occupied Europe to help prepare France for the Allied invasion, that Grace realizes that she will not be able to rest until she figures out what happened to the women in the pictures. And what she learns is not pretty.The Lost Girls of Paris follows a familiar pattern for Pam Jenoff novels in that it simultaneously tells two stories set a few years apart through the viewpoints of multiple characters. This time, one of the plots runs through 1944 and the other occurs in 1946, and there are three distinct narrators (Grace; the woman who lost the suitcase; and one of the women whose picture is found in the suitcase). It is an interesting enough book to make me want to learn more about the Special Operations Executive (SOE) authorized by Churchill and the men and women sent behind enemy lines to sabotage and otherwise subvert Germany’s attempt to conquer the world. That’s something I want to learn more about even though (or maybe especially because) the novel’s characters are so poorly developed that they never quite seem like real people in real danger. This one could/should have been so much better than it is.
    • 3/5
      I just couldn’t become deeply immersed in the story ‘The Lost Girls of Paris’, a historical fiction novel about a group of brave English women who are trained to infiltrate German lines to fight for the Allies during World War II. In my opinion, the author Pam Jenoff somehow misses the mark in developing some of the characters in their relationships with each other, to make the story come alive. Eleanor Trigg is the head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret branch of the military, which recruits and sends women to carry out dangerous missions, such as bombing bridges and penetrating enemy lines to send secret radio transmissions to the Allies. Least likely of all the women is Marie, who other than being fluent in French, seems ill-suited to such dangerous and challenging missions. Then in the present day is Grace, a character, who one day just coincidentally finds a briefcase at Grand Central Station belonging to Eleanor Trigg. This all too plausible and unexpected discovery leads the story toward Grace’s intense curiosity, propelling the plot forward, seemingly at snail’s pace. Although this story might be a worthy one because of its connection to historical events, I did not think that it was Pam Jenoff’s best work, and I rated it three stars based on the historical interest that it conjured up for me.
    • 3/5
      Jenoff based this novel on the Special Operations Executive set up by Churchill early in WW II to set Europe on fire. Part of the program was hire young women to be trained as radio operators who would then be dropped into France to be the communications link between London and the agents and underground who were sabotaging German infrastructure.Some of these radio operators were captured, tortured and killed. In this novel, the premise is that the SOE leadership knew the Germans had broken the radio code but did not warn the female operators in order give the Germans misleading information about D-Day. As result, most of the women in this unit plus the agents they fed information to in France were captured and killed.The novel opens with Grace Healey in 1946 New York City witnessing a woman being hit by a car and killed. She finds the woman's suitcase in Union Station in which she finds photos of young women which leads her to search for who they were and why the woman, Eleanore Trigg was in New York. The novel goes back and forth in time from 1944 England and France and 1946 New York. We move through the novel through the eyes of Trigg as the organizer of the SOE's woman's division to Grace in New York.An additional narrator is a young single mother Marie, one of the young women hired to do this dangerous job through whose eyes we see what it was like to be an SOE agent in France constantly hiding from the Gestapo and what happened to an agent when she was captured.A gripping fast moving story that is difficult to put down.