Synopsis

Austen Keller was living her dream. She landed a career-defining job which moved her and her husband to Paris. <Swoon!> Shortly thereafter, she was divorced. This wasn’t the plan. Yet there she was—pushing 40 and starting over.

A decade after she’d last been single, Austen enters the dating scene playing by a new set of rules in a different language, culture, and lingerie standards. She experiences every type of miserable first date imaginable and lives to tell the tales of Pierre the Mansplainer, Simon the Snoozer, Emile the Over-Sharer, Guillaume of the Gym Shorts, and many more. On most dates, she struggles to get past one glass of Bordeaux without wanting to bolt. Even worse, no one chases after her when she runs. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that whoever said French men were romantic deserves a swift kick in the pants.

A rewarding and high-powered career.

Fabulous female friendships.

True love. <Umm?>

Austen continues to ask herself: Is “having it all” too much to ask?

A genuine and tragically hilarious novel about an ex-pat woman’s journey of self-discovery through a string of disastrous dates, relationships forged in a deep cultural divide, world travels, and wine. A lot of wine.

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Review

I have to start off by saying I LOVE the title of this book! That is a question I ask often…it could make or break going to an event!

Austen is my kind of gal, and I think we would be good friends. She is strong, confident, and knows what she wants from life. Well, most of the time. She seems to be chasing love or an idea of what love should be like. This is a detriment in a way because she looks at things unrealistically, but it makes for good fodder when telling dating stories, which we are privy to via her blog stories. Men are the same no matter what country you are in; you will have some winners and some losers.

There is a lot of flirting, witty repartee, interesting travels, and soul searching. I enjoyed the various locations and the interesting characters. I liked how there was a close-knit group that spans the globe. I was jealous that they could drop and take a trip at almost the drop of a hat. But that is the difference between European and American outlooks when it comes to vacation.

This was a fairly quick read for me, and I look forward to future adventures from this author.

About the Author

Whitney Cubbison is an American living in Paris since 2009. She grew up in Texas and California and graduated from UCLA with a degree in French. She started her career in Communications working for high-tech PR agencies in San Francisco and eventually joined Microsoft, where she worked for sixteen years, thirteen of which from the Paris office. During that time, she held various international roles that encompassed public relations, employee communications, executive speechwriting, and social media.

She left Microsoft in July 2022 to focus on completing her first novel, Will There Be Wine? The story, while fiction, is deeply inspired by Whitney’s own experiences as an ex-pat divorcée living in Paris and trying to navigate the cultural minefield of dating in a foreign country.

DatingDisasters.Paris is the URL of a “dates-gone-wrong” blog written by the book’s main character, Austen Keller, and also happens to be Whitney’s author website.

When she’s not writing, Whitney can be found sitting in Parisian cafés and restaurants with her friends, drinking wine.

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