Vanessa Yu Book Tour Review + Playlist

Title: Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop

Author: Roselle Lim
Publication: 04 August 2020 by Berkeley Romance
Genre: Adult, Romance, Contemporary
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     Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people’s fortunes—or misfortunes—in tea leaves.
     Ever since she can remember, Vanessa Yu 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 romantic life is so nonexistent that her parents enlist the services of a matchmaking expert from Shanghai.
     The day before her matchmaking appointment, Vanessa accidentally sees her own fate: death by a traffic accident. 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 America and bonjour to Paris. While working at Evelyn’s tea stall at a Parisian antique market, Vanessa performs some matchmaking of her own, attempting to help reconnect her aunt with a lost love. As she learns more about herself and the root of her gifts, she realizes one thing to be true: knowing one’s destiny isn’t a curse, but being unable to change it is.

All of us are unsure of our future. However, we have a bit of intuition in us that we somehow know what would take place. This instinctive knowing came from our small to big decisions and/or our positive thinking during negative happenings that would result in either acceptable or horrible occurrence. To be born with clairvoyance in knowing a bit of the future is a wonderful gift a person could have, but not to Vanessa Yu.

Our MC struggled with her endowment since she was 3 years old. To her, even with her another clairvoyant Aunt's help in controlling what she sees, it is a curse and she's persistent not to accept it. And so, she thought that the only way to control her life is for her to get rid of the ability. Yet with her apparent power to perceive things, she only saw the end of her life... not what's in between. 

There is flawlessness about how the characters are written especially, Aunt Evelyn. I am proud to share that while I was live-tweeting my reading progress of the book and shared that I can only accept Michelle Yeoh as Aunt Evelyn whenever it would be adapted into a movie, Roselle Lim the author, confirmed that she is exactly who she pictured!

Another plus point is the plot with its [I have read somewhere that it is] magical realism. If you're familiar with Sarah Addison Allen and have loved her books especially Garden Spells, you will surely fell for this too. Thus, Roselle Lim has hit my inner soft goddess towards troubled main characters like Vanessa as a result of her extraordinarily good writing. 

Aside from the abundance of delineated delicacies of America and Paris, Vanessa Yu's Magical Tea Shop will bring you an Asian family's unconditional love; a person's sufferance of her self; and, a liberation of one's unselfishness. A remarkable read.

Source: NetGalley - Thank you! · I received a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Vanessa Yu's Magical Tea Shop is available for purchase on
Amazon Barnes and Noble Book Depository IndieBound

Here's a playlist for ya'll to listen while reading! Click on the photo to get redirected to your Spotify player.

I am proud to be part of this awing book tour. Thanks to Shealea, Caffeine Book Tours, Roselle Lim, and Berkeley Romance for the opportunity and for letting us tour hosts experience this delicious book!