Early Review: Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble by Alexis Hall

August 27, 2022

by Alexis Hall

Pub Date: Nov 1, 2022

🍰 3.5 stars out of 5 🍰

Despite having been warned that this book wasn’t a romance or a romcom (those are debatable) and that the anxiety rep was intense, I still feel underprepared for what this book was. (Not that I even *know* what it was.) I feel almost unable to assess it properly after just one read-through. My opinion of it changed drastically several times while reading as I adjusted and readjusted my expectations. I’m not sure I can give a coherent or meaningful opinion on it right now. I’m also not sure I want to reread it so… 🤷🏻‍♀️ But I’ll do my best to come up with a review that says more than “…it was okay?”

The TV show characters are all back and even more enjoyable than the first go-round (in Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake), in my opinion. The on-set animosity between host Grace Forsythe and producer Jennifer Hallett is great. Not really sure why but I enjoyed this set of contestants more, too. Alexis Hall fans know that he has a love of writing quirky side characters and in addition to the baking show contestants, we get Tariq’s four flatmates who are all named Dave. While this seems like a James Royce-Royce redux, they were actually amusing enough for me give them a pass. Gay Dave, Ginger Dave, Welsh Dave and Jewish Dave. They were definitely… entertaining.

The majority of this book is excruciating. And in a way, it’s meant to be. Though it feels more like a case study in severe anxiety disorders than a romance or a romcom.

We’ve got Paris, an MC with soul-eating anxiety, non-existent self esteem/self worth, who experiences intrusive thoughts and self doubt, does lots of overthinking, and struggles with assertiveness and self loathing. And we’ve got Tariq, an easygoing, self-confident, religious queer Muslim MC who doesn’t believe in premarital sex or drinking. They are about as opposite as two people can get.

Paris can be very un-self-assured and needs someone who can takes the reins sometimes and Tariq fits that bill. Tariq doesn’t understand Paris but he cares enough to push back against Paris’s negative self-talk. He doesn’t let him get away with believing bad things about himself. And that was nice but Tariq and Paris still just didn’t feel like a good fit. But by the end of the book they both realize they’d handled their relationship very badly and have a lot of learning about themselves and each other to do, which I appreciated.

I liked how Alexis Hall added the element of social media to the book. We all live with social media and must acknowledge the detrimental effect it can have on our self esteem. We inevitably “meet” people online who send negativity our way in the form of trolling or hate speech or any number of other things in between. It’s easy to take mean comments personally and absorb them like we deserve them and Paris struggles with this a lot, especially once he becomes a public figure via the baking show. The mean tweets we see at the beginning of later chapters (once the show starts airing) reflect just how awful it is to hear bad things said about you, even from strangers. It emphasizes how hard it is to ignore negative comments and prevent them from affecting you. The tweets also demonstrate that, if you look at everything that’s being said, there’s no consensus, it’s all meaningless, it’s impersonal despite the appearance otherwise, and ultimately pointless to pay attention to. Everyone may have their opinion but we certainly don’t need to take them all seriously. Whether it’s bullying on the playground or comments from Twitter trolls, it’s important to remember it’s not about you, it’s about them. Paris eventually got this message and it was great to see.

So all in all, I related to Paris more than what is probably healthy so I’m surely biased but I really liked him and empathized with him. I liked his character arc, the effort he made at getting better and his overall growth. I was really happy with where he was when the book ended.

And also, to clarify*:

it IS a romance; there is a HFN ending which technically allows it to be considered a romance
it IS a romcom; despite the super heavy topics, there is quite a lot of lightheartedness and humor in it, mostly found in the TV show and flatmate scenes

*YMMV on these points, though. The romance is fleeting in the beginning, and between two very young people who are still figuring themselves out. They break up but eventually tacitly agree to give it another go.

As for the “com” part, the tone of the book is a very weird mix of super heavy and lightweight fluff that didn’t always work for me. One may outweigh/overshadow the other for you and maybe you won’t consider it a romcom. Arguments could be made either way. (And personally I would say it’s *barely* either.)

3.5 stars out of 5

Thanks to NetGalley and Forever/Grand Central Publishing for providing the digital arc