There’s a certain kind of book that makes you question everything you’ve just read. You flip back a few pages, reread a line, and think, Hold on… did they really just lie to me? That moment of confusion and awe? That’s the magic of an unreliable narrator.

Romance has always been built on patterns. From Shakespeare to Austen to BookTok favorites, certain storylines keep showing up because they capture something timeless about longing and connection.

When I visited London and Paris this year, I knew I wanted to soak it all in. The romance of both cities had been on my bucket list for years, and I had a long list of landmarks I wasn’t willing to miss. But I also knew how overwhelming it could be to navigate two of Europe’s largest capitals. I didn’t want to spend my time buried in subway maps or trying to figure out how far it was from the Tower Bridge to Buckingham Palace.