The Paris Widow (spoilers and ending explained) | Kimberly S Belle
This is my spoiler review for The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle, where I’ll outline how the book ended and what I thought. If you are looking for a spoiler-free review, head back to the main page. You can always come back here when you’re done!
What is The Paris Widow about?
An unknown woman is in line at customs in Nice. She’s heading home after a long trip, but the agent clearing her finds something stitched inside her bag. It’s a book, and it’s one she has never seen before. But that doesn’t stop them from arresting her for what they found.
A married couple Stella and Adam are at the tail end of a three-week vacation in Europe. Stella is well-traveled and she knows the best gallettes in the city are at a little café that Adam must try before they head to the airport. After their lunch, Adam realizes he left his glasses behind and sends Stella ahead to their hotel to get their bags. But before they can reunite to head to the airport, there’s an explosion.
In the wake of the explosion, Stella frantically searches for Adam. It soon becomes clear that he was likely a victim. Over the next few days, Stella prays for news of Adam’s safety. But as the police continue to pepper her with questions, she soon learns that Adam wasn’t the man she thought he was. He’s alleged to be a dealer of rare and stolen antiquities heavily involved with the criminal underworld. Was Adam a victim of the explosion, or the target of it?
What happened after the explosion?
Emergency crews continue to work and clear the scene, but there is no sign of Adam. Footage of Stella at the site of the explosion makes the news, and she becomes dubbed “the Paris widow” in the media. The case is assigned to lieutenant colonel Arnaud Collome of the Paris Police Force. He isn’t exactly trying to help Stella though. Collome investigating Adam for his role in the theft and sale of rare and stolen antiquities. The police don’t believe the explosion was random, they think Adam was the target.
Meanwhile, Stella finds an antique ring hidden in their hotel room. Inside are engraved letters or initials. Stella doesn’t hand the ring over to the police, since she’s still unsure if she believes what they’ve said about Adam. Meanwhile a man from the US embassy named Lucas Fournier gets in touch with Stella to help her. Relieved, Stella spills everything about the investigation by Collome. Lucas seems troubled by this, but promises to get information for her and signs off. As Stella continues to search through Adam’s things, she finds a white card with a string of numbers on it–a bank account. Meanwhile Lucas finds her and they speak in person. He gives her Adam’s phone back.
What is the deal with the white card and the gold ring?
Still searching for answers, Stella reaches out to a business colleague of Adam’s named Antoine. They discuss the alleged investigation into Adam, and she describes the white card she found. Antoine sounds interested, but Stella keeps it’s location to herself. Antoine and Stella are exchanging phone numbers when he notices the antique ring. Antoine becomes agitated and questions her about where she got the ring. He offers her 10,000 Euros for it. Stella refuses the offer, feeling on edge at his desperation to take possession of the ring. When Stella gets back to the hotel, she discovers someone broke into their room and stole Adam’s laptop. The safe is open, but her belongings are still intact. Stella thinks they were after the white card, and she’s glad it was safely in her purse.
Collome arrives at the hotel and tells Stella they found a body matching Adam’s description. Stella is devastated. After Collome leaves, one of Antoine’s employees reaches out to Stella about a fight she witnessed between Adam and Antoine. Antoine was concerned that Adam was stealing from powerful people in the criminal underworld. On her way back to the hotel, someone shoves a mysterious cell phone into Stella’s hands before driving off. The phone rings and Stella accepts the call. It’s Adam.
What happens after Stella finds out Adam is alive?
Adam asks her to throw her phone in the river and to protect the ring she found. He says a woman named Katrijntje will come to get it from her and return it to its rightful owner. Adam tells her not to tell anyone that he is alive, it’s important that they think he is dead. Katrijntje (Kat) finds Stella and admits she was the one who gave her the cell phone from Adam. Kat confirms that Adam stole the ring from Antoine, though Antoine is not the rightful owner. Kat promises to return the ring to the Oscar Wilde Foundation where it was taken from. Stella gives her the ring and puzzles over why Adam would have a rare stolen ring if he wasn’t involved in the black market.
At the hotel, Stella is puzzling over what she has learned and something clicks into place. She looks through her vacation photos until she finds one from their day at the marina in Capri. It’s a photo that shows a large yacht with the name Aphrodite IV. The yacht is owned by a woman named Margot Fazzari, and Stella realizes it’s no coincidence she was at the marina the same day as her and Adam.
Meanwhile Stella realizes that the British man she met after the explosion is following her. He reveals his name (Finn) and tells her that Collome isn’t only after Adam; he suspects Stella is involved in the stolen antiquity trades as well. Stella tries to contact Lucas at the embassy, but she learns there is no one who works at the embassy by the name Lucas Fournier. Adam begins to text her begging her to leave Paris and go home. He sends her a link and it shows a woman falling from a tall building to her death. The woman is Katrijntje. She learns Kat was a famous detective who tracked down stolen artwork and returned it to its rightful owner.
Stella contacts a man named Sully for help. In a flashback, the reader learns that the woman arrested at the airport in the prologue was Stella. Before she met Adam, Stella was working as a flight attendant and fell in love with a Turkish man named Sully who got her to smuggle items with her out of the country. For two years, Stella carried items across international borders without being caught, until one time she was asked to bring a rare, stolen book with her. She was caught with the stolen book but didn’t confess how it got into her possession. After a month in a French prison, Stella was freed and she left Sully for good.
What does Stella learn from Sully?
In present day, Sully drops what he is doing and comes to meet Stella after she calls for help. Stella fills Sully in on what has happened and what she has learned. When Stella tells Sully about the Aphrodite IV and Margot’s appearance in Capri, they both know it can’t be a coincidence. After Sully’s questions, Stella realizes that Adam and her didn’t meet by chance, he was targeting her due to her connection to Margot. Sully offers to help and departs. Back at the hotel, Stella realizes that the heart necklace Adam gave her a week earlier must have significance. She smashes the heart open and finds a SIM card inside. On the SIM card are countless photographs, emails, and lists cataloging stolen items and who purchased them. Stella realizes everything the police said about Adam must be true.
After copying everything from the SIM card onto a thumb drive, Stella reconnects with Sully. Sully tells her that Adam has made powerful enemies. The British man (Finn) that has been following Stella works for MI6 and was looking for Adam. Further, Margot’s purchases go through a man who goes by Aljazaar, and the pieces click into place. Margot purchased the ring that Stella handed over to Kat, but Adam never gave it to her. Stella gets a message to Margot to meet, and goes to Margot’s house in Paris. When she arrives, Stella encounters Lucas (the man who pretended to work for the embassy) and realizes Lucas is Aljazaar.
How does it end?
Margot is wearing the gold ring and Stella realizes that Margot is the one who killed Kat. Stella tells Margot about the SIM card and Margot gives her information. Adam and Kat were working together and creating high quality forgeries of the art pieces and selling them to clients. Adam appears at Margot’s, shocking Stella. Lucas called Adam to tell him Stella was at Margot’s house. Adam confesses that he targeted Stella after she was arrested for smuggling the book Margot had asked him to procure. Adam initially thought Stella was his competition, but everything changed when he fell in love with her. Adam tries to bargain with Margot to release Stella, but Margot knows that the only way to truly get rid of the SIM card is to get rid of Adam and Stella. Lucas arrives with a gun. Margot smashes artwork and orders Lucas to kill Adam and Stella. With several things happening at once, Stella isn’t sure what happened until she sees Adam falling to the ground, shot in his chest. Uniformed men arrive.
At the hospital, Stella waits for news of Adam. Finn (the British man and MI6 agent) sits down next to her. Finn tells Stella that Adam is financing terrorism by selling the blood antiquities. Adam is one cog in the machine, but an important one. Stella learns that Adam turned himself in years earlier after he met Stella, and was working undercover for MI6. Stella doesn’t want to live life on the run, but Finn isn’t sure he can get her protection based on what has occurred. Stella offers to hand over the SIM card in exchange for protection.
What happened in the epilogue?
Three months later, Stella is sitting at a cafe in Paris. She never went back home to her friends or job. Stella is under witness protection and going by the name Estelle Tremblay. Sully arrives and sits down with her at the table, telling her he has kept an ear out for any rumblings but no one seems to be after her. Stella knows this is partly because no one knows about the white card and the accounts that Adam created. She doesn’t know how much money is in the accounts, but thinks it is likely substantial. Sully has ordered her a vehicle and Stella says goodbye and walks to the SUV. Waiting inside the SUV is Adam, who now goes by the name Noah. No one has learned that Adam is still alive besides Sully and Finn, but it’s only a matter of time before it leaks. Adam and Stella are headed to a small stone house in the South of France, where they plan to live under their new identities and start a new life.
What did I think?
The Paris Widow is the sort of book that you just need to give in to a certain level of unbelievability and go along for the ride. Spies, explosions, blood antiquities, terrorism, criminal underworld, and secret identities are already a bit farfetched. But when you add in the fact that the ending is so neat and perfect, it’s completely unrealistic.
Did I hate it? Only when I think about it too hard. (No, I didn’t hate the book, but I did have a few things that niggled at me)
On the one hand, I thought the ending was a bit too cute. Adam and Stella are rich beyond belief, have escaped the massive network of powerful people after them, and got the MI6 to let them go no strings attached. Adam was shot but after a brief stay in the ICU is fine–something that they have managed to keep completely secret from everyone (including the hospital staff). Now they are living a wealthy life in the South of France free and clear of what they did. And yes, they did turn over the data and Adam worked undercover, but Adam was also complicit in financing terrorism and Stella herself was an active participant. They stole presumably billions of dollars, and if any of you have gone through the background clearance for intelligence then you know that they observe for any signs of wealth. I’m sure that Finn knows exactly how much they make in witness protection and they are living well above that.
This all annoyed me to an extent. At the same time, I’ve read Kimberly Belle before and I knew to expect a happy ending. No matter how twisted her books get, the main characters always end up being heroes. For that reason, I never expected Adam to truly be guilty, and at a certain point I felt like it was obvious he was working undercover. I expect that many readers will be shocked by the twist, especially if they haven’t read much by Belle. Was it a bit too cute for my tastes? Absolutely. I managed my expectations and I was okay with Adam and Stella being cast into the hero roles. Some stories need a hero, and this was it.
Overall I found Adam boring, and his chapters didn’t help. I think Adam would have been more interesting if we didn’t hear from him at all. Stella was also a bit boring for the first half of the book, but I loved learning the truth about her previous dalliance into the criminal underworld. This made Stella infinitely more interesting, and I only wished that we didn’t know anything until Stella’s secret past was revealed. By the time we learned about Stella’s hidden past, we already basically knew everything. Still, Sully is perhaps the most enigmatic character in the book, and that made him endlessly fascinating to me. Did I secretly root for Stella to end up with Sully? I absolutely did. I’m a Stella and Sully truther, but perhaps Stella needed someone who is more purely good (despite the atrocious things they have done), and that person is Adam.
All in all, this is a fun book with some nice twists and turns. I was kept engaged the whole way through. I rolled my eyes at the showdown at Margot’s because it felt over-the-top. I also side-eyed the way the story wrapped up with a nice bow on top for Adam and Stella, but I am not a hater. I know Belle loves a happily ever after and I expected it. I felt sure Adam and Stella would end up together with plenty of money, and they did! After everything, it is kind of nice to end a dark and twisted story on such a high note. Belle sent me off into my next read believing true love conquers all, even terrorists.
