REVIEW: Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer

Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer by Vicki Lesage

Genres: Humour, Memoir
Published: May 2014 by CreateSpace
Pages: 232
Format: E-Book, Paperback
Rating: 6/10 
Description: 

Diapers, tantrums, and French bureaucracy--the crazy life of an American mom in Paris.
Former party girl Vicki trades wine bottles for baby bottles, as this sassy mommy of two navigates the beautiful, yet infuriating, city of Paris.
How does she steer a stroller around piles of dog poop? Or find time for French administration between breastfeeding and business meetings? And will she ever lose the baby weight with croissants staring at her from every street corner?
This hilarious memoir will have you laughing, crying, and wiping up drool right alongside Vicki as she and her ever-patient French husband raise two children in the City of Light.

Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer is an extremely well-structured and fun memoir that details an American woman living in Paris with her husband and starting a family- a wonderful premise. 

The story of the ups and downs of starting a family and finding an apartment was so great. 

For the most part, I did enjoy the more rambley parts of the novel, where LeSage goes off about something. She is a pretty analytic and a workaholic-type person, so some of stream-of-consciousness sections where she goes off about taxes or systems or something was off-putting. I'm personally not that technical or that inclined to mathematics and what not, so others may have enjoyed her technical rambles more than I personally did, but I digress. 

This memoir reads very much like a story, so if one hasn't read a memoir before, this is a pretty nice transition between fictional stories to real memoirs.

I wish that this book had more detail about the setting, because Paris is a wonderful place. I loved the sections discussing how small everything is (women, apartments, babies, ect.), however, I do wish there was more descriptions of Paris itself. Of course, it is a memoir so that doesn't really take anything away from the story itself.

Her voice is strong and often times, hilarious. I believe she captured the crazy mindset of a very pregnant women perfectly, as well as the American adjusting the a Parisian lifestyle. Her take on life and humans was poignant and funny.

Overall, if you are looking for a memoir encapsulating a woman's life in Paris and her journey to become a mother, this is a great memoir for you. It reads easily, like a story, with plenty of funny accounts to keep it interesting. Recommended.

*I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.*