ONCE UPON A VILLA: Adventures on the French Riviera, a vicarious stroll among the one-percenters

ONCE UPON A VILLA: Adventures on the French Riviera
ANDREW KAPLAN
Smuggler’s Lane Press
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this wise, warm-hearted, witty, and LOL hilariously funny true account, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Kaplan tells what it’s like when he, his wife, and two-year-old son decided to chuck it all and live the fantasy in a villa by the sea in that extraordinary corner of the world—part international café society, part billionaires’ playground, part provincial France—that is the French Riviera.

Whether it’s matching wits with French bureaucracy, searching for the perfect bouillabaisse, encounters with con men, eccentric ex-pats, and Monaco’s royal family, partying with the international set on Onassis’ yacht, playing chess with a philosophical police chief, or adventures and friendships with the rich and famous and the presumably standoffish French, Once Upon a Villa will transport you to a fascinating and shrewdly-observed world that you will savor like your first-morning bite of pain au chocolate.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: No idea if it’s just me or what, but I still crave comfort reads.

The world’s gotten way meaner here lately. It takes more and more effort not to simply check out and leave the awfulness to its own devices, perpetuating itself being its best-ever trick. Thus I approached this read with all the fervor I would’ve lavished on the Best-Costume Oscar had I known about the bit John Cena committed to this ceremony. The man’s fifty-five, y’all, give it up for growing old gracefully...and hotly.

Ahem. Focus, Mudge, focus!

So, back to Author Kaplan, and the idea of relocating to the Riviera. Short of money, the author clearly is not...and there’s my sticking point, the reason for my missing stars. The part of the read that was charming, the French and their cultural schizophrenia of warm, generous, welcoming people and cold, maddening bureaucracy, was outweighed in my pleasure-reading by a very arriviste kind of name-dropping and hobnobbing with the Society Set that has long made the South of France its own. So much of the book is about who the author and his shopaholic wife went around and about with that I lost my warm happy glow.

That was not fatal...the story is a lot of fun to read...it just hits me, the leftist redistributionist, in the wrong way. I do not care about Princess Caroline of Monaco. I do care about the neighbors who were kind.

I am not everyone, and I am quite sure many of y’all will not feel my collywobbles about the snobbery on view. I urge y’all to go to it, go get it, and enjoy its very real writerly pleasures. I felt uneasy about my own trip, but that is no reason you should. This tour of the land of naked privilege should entertain and distract (most) anyone.