Book Review: Anna and the French Kiss

Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Genre: Romance
Published: December 2nd 2010
Rate: 4.5
Synopsis: Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris--until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend.




 My review:
                                                       I am positively glowing after finishing this book. I didn't want it to end; I felt as if I were leaving a piece of myself behind in the book just because it had made me feel so many things in such a short span of time.

Anna and the French Kiss is wonderfully romantic, charmingly humorous, and refreshingly honest when it comes to teenage actions and emotions. This is one of those books that will leave anyone's heart warm and fuzzy one moment and torn with indecision and doubt the next. This story was all about the turmoil and mess that sometimes comes with falling in love -- but the backdrop of Paris gave it a solid grounding that made it even more vibrant -- though I would definitely argue it was vibrant enough with characters like Anna and Etienne. (There were many nice attentions to detail in this book as well -- such as the descriptions of Parisian delicacies, the architecture of the sights to be had in the city, and even the literature the seniors were reading for English.)

Speaking of the characters -- Anna is a heroine any girl could relate to since every girl who has ever had a crush on a boy has always wondered: Does he like me or not? And Etienne is a romantic, witty counterpart who is flawed in many ways. However, here's something that sets this story apart: the characters make mistakes -- but they grow and learn because of the errors they have made in the past. Needless to say, I was very happy with the way the story progressed because, to me, it seemed very true to life and the essence of what it means to be a teenager caught up in the tangles of love and its complications.

Stephanie Perkins definitely astounded me with this debut novel. She will assuredly make a mark in the YA scene with her novels. Here's hoping the companion novels to Anna will shine just as brightly as this one did