One of my latest reads was courtesy of Roundfire Books, who invited me to review a story about a wannabe writer who has a trip to Paris so of course I couldn’t turn that down.

By Way of Paris by Christopher Newman introduces us to American writer Luke. Him and his best friend are having a holiday to Paris before Luke heads to London to start a writing course. Unfortunately the discovery of a body leads to their trip going from dream to nightmare, a nightmare which he can’t escape no matter how hard he tries. Travelling to London to write his novel just starts a downward spiral that can only end badly.

I really enjoyed this story. It was a great portrayal of how easy it is for things to get out of control when that first shock hits a life.  Luke didn’t set out to become a criminal, but his writing and his life became so intertwined that I don’t think he always knew where one started and the other finished.

It was an interesting premise as obviously Luke is the main protagonist but also the narrator therefore as a reader you are only really given one side of the story and of course everyone wants to try and paint themselves in a good light. I actually found it quite strange as despite Luke being a pretty horrid gang member I had sympathy with him. He was blind to the Fagin style of operating that his so called friend Shane really had, despite people trying to help him. 

The novel is written from a singular point of view, but it was a show of the skill of writing that this worked really well giving a singular voice to a story with a large cast. What really stood out for me was the balance between violent crime story and the characters lives. Lots of the boys have really sad backstories and reasons for ending up where they are. I felt this was dealt with in a sensitive and quite heart wrenching way.

The actual story was really interesting, it felt quite fast paced and was an easy read which I thoroughly enjoyed. A great debut novel and I’ll definitely be on the look out for further books by Christopher Newman.

Buy a copy here https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/roundfire-books/our-books/by-way-paris-novel