Anna and the French Kiss – Book Review
Stephanie Perkins
YA Romance
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 Etienne St. Clair: perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible. The only problem is that he's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her almost-relationship back home.
As winter melts into spring, will a year of romantic near - misses end with the French kiss Anna - and readers - have long awaited?
As winter melts into spring, will a year of romantic near - misses end with the French kiss Anna - and readers - have long awaited?
I really, really enjoyed this book – so much so that I finished it all in one sitting by being bad and reading well into the early hours of the morning! It was however, totally worth the lack of sleep as it was an extremely delicious read. A mix of Sweet, romantic and funny, ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ is filled full of underlying tension and amorous suspense that simply makes it an incredibly hard book to put down.
When Anna is suddenly shipped off to a boarding school in Paris, her only thought is that she will spend the next ten months homesick and miserable. Leaving behind her best friend, adorable little brother and a blossoming relationship with the hot guy she’s been crushing on since, like, forever, all Anna wants is to get on a plane back home to Atlanta – Until she meets Etienne St. Clair.
Sinfully gorgeous, charismatic and utterly charming with his British accent, St. Clair captures Anna’s attention from the moment they meet, and it is soon obvious their attraction is mutual expect for one problem… St. Clair already has a girlfriend, and Anna is still unsure of her own feelings for Toph, the hot guy she left hanging back home. However romantic tension between Anna and St Clair soon starts to rise as she falls into his circle of friends and they find themselves growing inevitably closer.
I can honestly say that Stephanie Perkins writes such a great a compelling romance. Each scene between Anna and St. Clair is so real and heart-racing that just reading it gave my tummy butterflies. You basically spend the entire book just WILLING them to get it together as not only is their relationship constantly jeopardized by outside influences, but both are subject to misunderstandings and jealousy that test the limits of their friendship on quite a few occasions.
Overall I couldn’t help but fall in love with ‘Anna and the French Kiss’. With the story set against a back drop of Paris, and a drawn out romance steeped in friendship and trust – this book was truly a pleasure to read. Also while I am the first to admit that I’m not much of a fan of contemporary young adult, this has to be one of best books I’ve read in a long while with one of the greatest love stories. I would have to recommend it to every girl from teenage years upwards. Stephanie Perkins has written a book that is simply divine.
