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Welcome to my stop on the blog tour celebrating the release of Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim! Thank you to Berkley Publishing for the invitation!

Check out my review of Roselle Lim’s book from last summer.

About the Book:

Become enamored with the splendor of Paris in this heartwarming and delightful story about writing one’s own destiny and finding love along the way.

Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people’s fortunes—or misfortunes—in tealeaves.

Ever since she can remember, Vanessa has been able to see people’s fortunes at the bottom of their teacups. To avoid blurting out their fortunes, she converts to coffee, but somehow fortunes escape and find a way to complicate her life and the ones of those around her. To add to this plight, her romance life is so nonexistent that her parents enlist the services of a matchmaking expert from Shanghai.

After her matchmaking appointment, Vanessa sees death for the first time. She decides that she can’t truly live until she can find a way to get rid of her uncanny abilities. When her eccentric Aunt Evelyn shows up with a tempting offer to whisk her away, Vanessa says au revoir to California and bonjour to Paris. There, Vanessa learns more about herself and the root of her gifts and realizes one thing to be true: knowing one’s destiny isn’t a curse, but being unable to change it is.

 

My Thoughts:

Roselle Lim writes the most charming stories with touches of magic.

Vanessa Yu can read fortunes in tea leaves. She doesn’t want this gift, though, and it makes her life more difficult.

On top of that, her singleness has her parents up in arms and hiring a matchmaking expert from Shanghai.

Vanessa sees a fate in her tea leaves that scares her. From this point, she decides she has to get rid of this ability so she can live her life. Her aunt Evelyn whisks her away to Paris where she works in her aunt’s tea stall, and eventually she works as a matchmaker for her beloved aunt.

This is a such a warm story with so much heart. I just loved Vanessa and her aunt Evelyn. Talk about fun characters! I loved the small touch of magic and whimsy. The message is such a good one, too. Roselle Lim, I hope you have many more stories to tell us. Incorporating food (this is Lim’s thing- YUM), tea, and heartwarming storytelling, Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop is a gem of a story.

I received a gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

About the Author:

Roselle Lim was born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada as a child. She lived in north Scarborough in a diverse, Asian neighbourhood.

She found her love of writing by listening to her lola (paternal grandmother’s) stories about Filipino folktales. Growing up in a household where Chinese superstition mingled with Filipino Catholicism, she devoured books about mythology, which shaped the fantasies in her novels.

An artist by nature, she considers writing as “painting with words.”

Have you read Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop, or is it on your TBR? Happy Reading! ~ Jennifer THR