Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop

By: Roselle Lim

Narrated by: Nancy Wu

From the critically acclaimed author of Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune comes a delightful new novel about exploring all the magical possibilities of life in the most extraordinary city of all: Paris.

Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people's fortunes - or misfortunes - in tea leaves.

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.

©2020 Roselle Lim (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"...similar to the sweet fabulist-romcom style of Lim’s debut, this new book follows a young woman’s culinary and magical adventures." (BookRiot)

“Lim follows Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune with another picturesque fabulist rom-com…. Lim flexes her descriptive powers…. The eccentric and lovably meddlesome Yu family are a constant delight…. the characters sparkle, the magic successfully enchants, and Lim skewers the anti-Asian racism the Yus face in France with pointed and timely commentary. This feast for the senses will especially appeal to hopeless romantics.” (Publishers Weekly)

I might have cried a little!

This is my 2nd Lim novel. The first one, I read the book instead of an Audible, and it was a lyrical beauty . My only complaint with this reading is that the wonderful and diverse narrator has a tendency to lean into a rather breathless voice for the main character. It didn't ruin the story for me, but it gives a sort of whiny personality to the character that I don't feel she fully earned. I think Lim is a little overlooked. Many rave about J. Guillory. Those are nice weekend reads, but Lim's has a very distinct beauty to her writing. The cultural exploration is also nice (food, travel, art, familial traditions, and more food)!

predictable storyline

I liked the premise of the story, but it was quite predictable. Fun light read.

Magical, realism novel to have tea with

This was exactly what I was looking for: a light, sweet listen. The storyline was really predictable, but enchanting. I didn’t find myself wondering what was going to happen next and drawn to listening to it at every moment, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

One of the things that threw me off at the end, (and I don’t wanna spoil it for you) was the completely unrealistic way one of the characters was going to deal with an addiction.

The narrator was very “breathy” which I found annoying at times, but most of the time I enjoyed her. I this book to be quite delightful and enjoyable.

Super Cute Easy Listening

This story was so sweet & interesting! I loved that it included romance but the main characters romance wasn’t the entirety of the book. There was this mystery surrounding her aunt and what would happen with her gift and it keeps you interested in finding out something other than if they get their happily ever after. I loved the Asian culture & the Aunties.

Holy Heavy Breathing

The book was decent. I had to read it for book club and thought the audio book would help me get through a book that wouldn’t be something I would choose for myself. But holy god the narrator’s heavy breathing and throat noises. I had to abandon the audible version and buy the Kindle version. I couldn’t handle it.

Simple story

The story is Lifetime-movie quality, and the narrator is robotic. Predictable and an easy beach read.

Promising concept, poor execution

I really wanted to like this book, especially to support AAPI authors, but the quality of the writing was just clunky and in dire need of editing. Much of the description was overkill, over the top anime/drama, and some descriptions made me cringe as an Asian American as they read aa cliche and almost performative (losing a relative's expensive scarf isn't being "disrespectful to an elder", it's just not a good thing.) Certain references to Asian culture felt overdone and overexaggerated. Overall I forced my way through the book and wish it had been easier. Had this not been an Asian author I would have stopped reading by Chapter 2. I hope future books by the author are better written and paced.