In What If It's Love? by Alix Nichols, Lena is a young Russian heiress who recently broke up with her staid boyfriend and went to stay in Paris, the city of lights. It's also know as the city of love and, as Lena spends her days translating the work of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, she comes to experience the city's magic first hand when Rob, a handsome young waiter, takes an interest in her. But there are many factors that get in the way of them truly coming together - like Rob's friend Amanda, who also likes him and is determined to get her way and Lena’s own tendency to run away from issues instead of facing the. The biggest one of all is when Lena discovers that Rob was paid by a rival of her father's. Even though he claims to have stopped once he got to know her, Lena isn't sure she can trust him anymore, and runs back to Moscow. But as the months pass, Lena realizes that she can't forget him as easily as her last boyfriend and wonders, what if it is really love?

I enjoyed What If It's Love? by Alix Nichols. The beginning was a little rocky as many characters and names were introduced often before the main character actually met them. I was often confused as to who was who and what was what. But after Lena meets Rob, I was able to get into the groove of things and enjoyed all aspects of the novel from Bistro La Bohème, a cafe frequented by Lena that was almost like an extra character in the novel, to the beautiful translations of Marina Tsvetaeva's poems which were done by the author herself. There's even a peek into the next Bistro La Bohème book which I’m sure to enjoy just as much as this one.

What If It’s Love? A Bistro La Boheme Novel, written by Alix Nichols, is literary fiction disguised as a contemporary romance. Lena is the only daughter of a Russian oligarch, who continues to maintain a close and anxious concern for her health and well-being. He’s somewhat worried when she tells him of her decision to finish writing her master’s thesis in Paris, rather than in Geneva where she’s been studying for the last six years. Lena needs a fresh start; however, her relationship with Gerhard has been going nowhere and, when he doesn’t ask her to stay, she knows her decision was wisely made. Paris is all she expected it to be. She finds a studio apartment in a bustling part of the city in a building that also houses a cafe, where she spends hours working on her thesis and the translation of the poetry of Tsvetaeva, a Soviet poet from the early twentieth century, into French.

Alix Nichols’ contemporary fiction novel What If It’s Love? is much more than the romance I expected when I began reading it. Each chapter begins with a translation of a poem by Tsvetaeva, which sets the tone for the chapter. Lena discusses her problems with other translators’ versions of the poet’s work, and how she’s trying to get the nuances as well as the rhymes and meter of Tsvetaeva’s work into her translations. As her world and experience expand, she's able to understand more fully the poems she's translating. What If It’s Love? is also an inspired coming of age story, and it's marvelous to watch as Lena grows from a sheltered, insecure young woman into an accomplished adult. What If It’s Love? is an exceptionally entertaining contemporary romance, and it is highly recommended.