This is a great one if you're a fan of minimal plot, messy unlikeable characters and are looking for some armchair travel . The setting of Paris, South of France, Greece and Soho London is what made the book for me and i loved the vivid descriptions of the places . The story uses a dual timeline which at times is confusing as it doesn't clearly state if the chapter is past or present but once you got into the characters heads it all made more sense. The ending was a bit of an anti climax but i did love the writing and would be keen to pick up more from the author in the future

It took me a while to get around to reading this but I’m SO glad I did. It was the right kind of English girl in Paris/France mixed up with weird rich people story in the countryside, lots of eating outside and swimming in the ocean.

I liked this book in places but it didn't do it for me fully. I didn't fully connect with Leah as the main character and think that she wasn't as fleshed out as she could've been. The writing was fine but it never had me hooked like similar books had. Overall, this isn't a bad book, just kind of disappointing.

I wasn't sure what I would think about this having read read blurb. I found it intriguing and that is the word to describe my experience. I was intrigued

Really enjoyed this sultry, exciting and well-written tale, particularly the description of the settings which made me long for balmy and adventurous journeys overseas. Told with wit and a deep knowledge of the characters, this is definitely an author I will be reading again.

I was sold on this from the minute I heard it described as a “sultry, summer read”. Since we haven’t been able to go anywhere in approximately twenty years, I needed the escapism and atmosphere that comes with a great holiday book - and this definitely delivered. While I agree that none of the characters are particularly pleasant or endearing people, it was this raw honesty (particularly on the part of the protagonist) that I appreciated. If I were to be feeling especially harsh, I would call Leah a whiny, privileged, narcissistic millennial. Having said that, she is also me, and therefore I can see past these problematic flaws. I’m not excusing her or myself, but it was so refreshing to read my own thoughts and feelings within a book’s character: I feel it doesn’t happen often, because authors think they have to solely create fascinating, beguiling, or mysterious people. This makes a lot of modern fiction very readable, but wildly unrealistic. My affinity with Leah dropped off towards the end of the book, as her life came to resemble those of the people she had previously scorned: she lands a lucrative job in the arts, that would be vastly oversubscribed and underpaid; men start to fall all over her; she ends up on a free holiday in the south of France; etc. Yet I still enjoyed it immensely, and look forward to Reece’s next title.

Great sense of place - it's clear the author really knows France and French culture. Unfortunately I found the protagonist very grating and a lot of the themes and interactions just too familiar - a talented newcomer but on this occasion a victory of style (including the great cover) over substance for me.

A really great book!

Really impressed by this debut which captivated me.

Francesca transported me to France so well , I could feel the warmth of the sun and the song of the cicadas...

Who is the Voyeur in this story? You have to read to find out but somehow disturbingly everyone seems to be at some point...

Diving into Michael’s life sand his diaries, Leah will soon discover that there is more than meets the eyes, and you get to follow the untangling of the decades of secrets, with the mystery gripping you until the very end.

Thank you so much Tinder Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read.

This novel, set mainly in rural France during a hot summer, flips between two narrators - Leah, a young employee, and Michael, her middle-aged writer employer - but with a cliched view of millennial life from both (with Michael scathing and Leah living it) I just found it all a bit much. I kept hanging on because I wanted to know what happened with Astrid, Michael’s talented singer girlfriend of his youth, as her story is teased throughout while Leah transcribes Michael’s diaries, but I found the ending anticlimactic. It wasn’t bad exactly, just not quite what I wanted.

Leah is the main character of this book and her cynical view on life made me connect with her! She is drifting along in life, not sure of where she wants to go, what she wants to be so just sees where life will take her. And that is Paris to begin with, where she can people watch and teach English part time to earn some money. She finds life in France liberating and soon a job opportunity arises to work for a writer.

Michael is a writer, and sees a girl who takes him back in time as though he's seen a ghost. She bears a striking resemblance to Astrid, an old flame, and he finds himself smitten. Through his eyes we get the story of how he met Astrid and how their story unfolded. And how those who knew him then, think he's playing a dangerous game now by being around this young woman.

Leah then spends the Summer with Michael and his family and soon becomes very involved in the family goings on and it's a very dark and sultry story that plays out.

It's a very atmospheric story, with some unpleasant characters, but thanks to the setting and the clever way the story is told with the past and present, it really does do a great job of keeping your attention to which way the story will twist and turn next!

Leah is in her mid-twenties, a Brit living in Paris, teaching English and working in a café, and she’s feeling some very typical mid-twenties feelings.
‘I was three years out of university and I was floundering. I felt already like I’d peaked; like my promising adolescence had been an anomaly.’
Seeking a change, she answers an oddly worded advert for an ‘archiving/research’ job and finds herself working for author Michael Young – formerly an enfant terrible of the literary scene, now in danger of being seen as somewhat washed up.

What ensues is partly Leah’s coming-of-age story, one that pans out as she grows closer to the bohemian Young family. It also has a more plot-driven strand, propelled by chapters told from Michael’s point of view, in which we learn his real reason for hiring Leah: her physical resemblance to Astrid, an old girlfriend he seems to consider the love of his life. As Leah is tasked with editing his diaries, the question of what happened to Astrid becomes increasingly sinister and urgent.

Voyeur is both a very current idea for a novel, with ideas about privilege and the male gaze as its touchstones, and very old-fashioned in its dense prose. Leah’s voice is far from the clipped, pared-back tone one usually finds in narratives about young millennials – if the story hadn’t been set circa the mid-2010s I would’ve thought she was in her sixties and reflecting on the follies of youth, but as the book progresses it gradually becomes easier to perceive her as a somewhat precocious/pretentious twentysomething given to romanticising and dramatising every inch of her own life. Still, the writing really comes into its own when we’re with the younger Michael and Astrid. These sections are so arresting that I occasionally resented cutting back to yet another scene of Leah & co going to a party or getting drunk on the beach.

Voyeur is one of a trio of books I have recently read with similar themes – ambition, ego, entitlement, unequal relationships – and, as with the others (A Ladder to the Sky and The Favour), it’s almost completely devoid of likeable people and compelling because of, not in spite of, that. It touches on questions of class, living in another language (observations here that reminded me of Fifty Sounds), and the thorny idea of ‘potential’ and the crippling, impossible pressure of living up to it. Wrapped within all that is a truly gripping mystery that kept me turning the pages.

My high school French was reasonably up to reading "Voyeur" although some phrases eluded me. Investigating further took me out of the story so eventually I resigned myself to skipping those bits. You mostly get the gist anyway.

Leah is a young English woman, adrift in Paris. Michael is misanthropic, despairing of the youth of today whilst yearning for his younger years. Through Michael, Leah gets a taste of bourgeois life and is drawn into Michael's unhealthy obsession with the past.

Francesca Reece beautifully animates Paris; the sights, sounds and smells. "Voyeur" is a sultry, sexy novel encompassing a variety of themes including class, food, drink, sex, culture and the Arts.

Leah, a young woman who has found herself 'ambitioned' out of London, is now aimlessly adrift in Paris. Tired of odd jobs in cafés and teaching English to unresponsive social media influencers, her heart skips a beat when she spots an advert for a writer seeking an assistant. Michael was once the bright young star of the London literary scene, now a washed-up author with writer's block. He doesn't place much hope in the advert, but after meeting Leah is filled with an inspiration he hasn't felt in years. When Michael offers Leah the opportunity to join him and his family in their rambling but glorious property in the south of France for the summer, she finally feels her luck is turning. But as she begins to transcribe the diaries from his debauched life in 1960s Soho, something begins to nag at Leah's sense of fulfilment; that there might be more to Michael than meets the eye.

This was a hard-hitting, grab your attention book from the get-go. It was amazing to hear about all the travel and wanderlust while in lockdown. The story did drag a little before unravelling at the end. Overall, a worthy read.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

I was so excited to read this novel but I feel that it unfortunately feel slightly flat for me. There was so much opportunity to say something clever but, for me, those opportunities were missed and it became cliched in parts.

I enjoyed this book up until the wanderlust became unbearable- hearing about Paris and Marseille during lockdown is tough! There are aspects of this novel that felt notably disjointed and out of place, and because of that the pace suffered, but I enjoyed the character formation throughout. Though I can't say any of the characters are likeable in any way- even our protagonist has very few redeemable qualities and everyone seems entirely self-absorbed, I felt like a fly on the wall. The final twist is not at all unexpected, though the ending feels very rushed. It felt very similar to Blood Orange; a little uncomfortable but enjoyable none the less.

I found the descriptions of the places really evocative and created a sense of colour and place that was engaging. The main narrative intrigue between the protagonists is interesting enough, and the ending cleverly solidifies the suggestion that men like Michael are monsters despite painting themselves as victims. Intriguing summer read.

This one just didn't really work for ME.
I found the characters unlikeable.
It also felt like it took a while to get anywhere,going back and forth in time.

I was in two minds about reading this, from the description it sounded like it could be done in a clever way or it could just hit a lot of cliches, and unfortunately for me it was the latter. I fully visualised the main character as being as obnoxious as Blair Waldorf or Carrie Bradshaw hamming it up in a beret. Just not really my thing at all.

I enjoyed this novel, told from the perspective of two characters over the course of 50 years and three different countries. Ostensibly the story of Leah, a fairly aimless Brit living in Paris in 2016 who goes to work for Michael, a once-very successful author who hasn’t written anything for the last 20 years, and becomes entangled in the lives of his family and friends as well as providing a link to Michael’s past, in the last third it reveals itself to have a different mystery at its core. I think it would have worked better had some of the elements been more deeply woven through the earlier parts of the novel and the ending is a little rushed but it’s an enjoyable read, although fair warning that if you’re stuck in lockdown like I was when I read it the wanderlust it inspires as it crosses Paris, Marseille and Athens might be unbearable! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The writing in Voyuer is strong and stylish, with some acerbic commentary here and there on class and social interactions, but eventually the pages, dripping with clever adjectives and metaphors to describe something irrelevant, become cloying and frustrating. Similarly, the secrets and surprises are withheld and drawn out until the end, but when you get there it's very low impact and due to the messy intertwining of POV's and timelines, I had to re-read a chapter or two to double check it was the dénouement for the whole story, not just one timeline. Another stylistic choice I hated was the stuffing in of French words to describe one thing, we know the narrator is fluent, and judging from the excerpts of French literature and philosophy preceding some chapters, I'm going to guess the author is too - we don't need to have the word for milk, telephone, or something equally trivial interspersed throughout the text.

Francesca Reece writes brilliantly and I would definitely check out her future work but ultimately, the plot here was too anti-climatic and the narrative too messy for me to go above 3 stars.