Susan Johnson’s French Kiss is acceptable escapist fare, if all the reader wants is to experience a foreign locale and vicariously live the life of the rich and famous through its characters. In it, an ordinary woman finds herself swept away to France and into the lavish world of movie stars, rock musicians, and international criminals. Unfortunately, the book itself is too much like that world: interesting for a while, but also superficial and utterly insubstantial.

Architect Nicole Lesdaux has a lucrative career designing tree houses for the children of the wealthy. Her latest job finds her at the home of rock star Johnny Patrick, who wants a tree house built for his daughter Jordi’s birthday. As she works on the project, Nicky gets to know Jordi and her sexy father. Then Johnny’s ex-wife Lisa, a famous actress with a drug problem, takes off for Paris with Jordi in tow. Desperate to retrieve his daughter, Johnny quickly makes plans to travel to France. Knowing that Nicky speaks French, he asks her to come with him to translate.

I don’t have much to say about this book, simply because there really isn’t much here to discuss. It gets off to a reasonable start, and I actually enjoyed the first several chapters. Nicky and Johnny seemed likable. Despite a tendency to throw money around (although all for the sake of his daughter), Johnny came across as reassuringly grounded and real. Jordi was endearing and thankfully non-bratty. The early sections of them getting to know each other were quite pleasant.

Then the “kidnapping” occurs and the characters take off for France. It’s actually resolved with surprising quickness and ease, which I sort of liked. I’m often puzzled by stories where the characters’ attitude seem to be, “Oh no, my child’s been kidnapped! Let’s have sex!” With that out of the way, it frees the characters to give in to the sexual attraction that had been bubbling under the surface up to that point. They have a lot of sex, then they hang out in France. More sex, then more hanging out.

And, well, that’s about it. There’s a mild suspense plot that crops up from time to time, but it’s never all that suspenseful or interesting. Otherwise, this leisurely paced story sort of drifts along without much happening. Johnson has a writing style that makes for easy reading. But the characters are shallow, the romance is merely okay at best, and the story is never compelling enough to spark more than a passing interest in the proceedings. As I said, there’s really not much here. I suppose the sex is sufficiently hot, but takes up maybe 20% of the book.

I can’t say French Kiss was an unpleasant reading experience, but even at 300 pages, the book is so slight it’s almost nonexistent. It really made no impression on me, let alone a lasting one. Spending $14.00 for such a thin tale seems excessive, but honestly, I couldn’t really recommend anyone run out and buy the book at any price.