Someone Like You

First released in 2015, the new English translation of Someone Like You, by Catalan-Spanish author Xavier Bosch, just came out yesterday. It’s divided between two timelines. In 1981, Paulina Homs travels from Barcelona to Paris for her cousin’s wedding weekend… and proceeds to fall in love with a French art gallery owner, Jean-Pierre Zanardi. More than 20 years later, Paulina’s daughter Gina is trying to put together the pieces of her late mother’s life.

What I Liked:

• Love for the arts. To start with the positive, and to its credit, Someone Like You does stand out for its love of art, literature, music, and culture. There’s a true appreciation of what makes life meaningful. This may be the only think I liked about the book, though…

What Didn’t Work for Me:

• Cheaters falling in love isn’t romance. Someone Like You is marketed as a romance, but it’s about a *married* woman who spends a whirlwind four-day weekend cheating on her husband. I’m supposed to view this as romantic? As two soulmates torn apart by geography and vows made to someone else? Yeah, no thank you. I don’t support infidelity, and certainly don’t view that as a romance worth rooting for. If Paulina is so unhappy with her husband, she should end things with him first before jumping into a new fling.
• The men are 20 years older. There are two relationships explored here, and both include a man who’s some 20 years older than the woman. Age gaps more than about ten years are just… icky. A 19-year-old and a guy who’s in his 40s? Ew. Even a 29-year-old woman and a 45-year-old? Still kind of off-putting.
• The storytelling is weird. The book starts off like it’s focused on Gina, who was nine when her mom, Paulina, passed away. Gina’s trajectory over the first few chapters is chaotic, and then she’s in her late 30s, reunited with her high school classmate Biel, and looking into the mystery of Paulina. But it doesn’t unfold like a mystery at all; we just abruptly get Paulina’s whole story next, and it takes up the majority of the novel. It’s not a conventional narrative arc, and it ends up feeling messy and directionless.
• Everything feels pointless. The characters keep talking about random people they know, random events, and themes that apparently hold meaning for the characters but no one else. Ultimately, everything seems to mean nothing.

Audiobook:

Caroline Hewitt and Braden Wright narrate Someone Like You. Most of the book focuses on either Paulina or Gina, but there are chapters from the POVs of Biel and Jean-Pierre. Both narrators do well in delivering the story.

Final Thoughts

I generally enjoy books set in Spain, written by Spanish authors, and translated into English. But Someone Like You ended up being a miss for me. I didn’t like the characters, what they were doing, or how the book was written. The only redeeming qualities about it weren’t enough to overcome all the negatives. I did somehow finish this, but I might have been happier if I’d DNF’d it.

Special thanks to Amazon Crossing, Brilliance Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy Someone Like You here – it’s available as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Someone Like You by Xavier Bosch
Translator	Samantha Mateo
Audiobook Narrators	Caroline Hewitt; Braden Wright
Audience	Adult
Genre	Historical Fiction
Setting	Spain; France
Number of Pages	272
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	August 11, 2026 (English translation)
Publisher	Amazon Crossing

Official Summary

Winner of the 2015 Ramon Llull Novel Award for Catalan literature and translated into eight languages, author Xavier Bosch’s tender story follows a daughter’s search for her mother’s lost love…and the love she discovers along the way.

Paris, 1981

Content with her peaceful family life in Barcelona, Paulina Homs came to Paris for her cousin’s wedding―nothing more. But when she meets free-spirited gallery owner Jean-Pierre Zanardi, it’s as though fate, not circumstance, has brought them together.

They only have five days before Paulina returns home. Five days that will reshape their lives forever.

Barcelona, the 2000s

Gina lost her mom when she was just nine years old. Ever since, she’s longed to discover who Paulina really was―not only as a mother, but as a person apart from her husband and daughter. Someone with a life all her own.

Those five days in Paris encompass the life Gina has always wondered about. And Jean-Pierre is the key.

Through old memories, new discoveries, and the testimony of people who were there, Gina begins to unravel the mystery that is her mother. And she comes to understand how deeply love is rooted―and how far it can grow.