Anna and the French Kiss: A Book Review

Genre: Hard core lovey dovey romance :P

Reading Level: 17 and up

Summary: 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. Claire: 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?

My Review: Hmmmm, that blurb doesn't sound amazingly interesting does it? I got this book from the library 'cause of all the great reviews I read about it. I was really excited to read it. I read it in one night. Because it was really really intense for me. Wow Stephenie Perkins what a debut. Doesn't the cover look like the book will be all cutesy and boy meets girl and they have troubles that aren't to weird and then get together? It was more like girl meets boyand a lot of serious jujumugumbo goes down that involves they're friends and families and will keep you up all night going "What's gonna happen gaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh~!" seriously it was another exhausting book. So I guess not what I expected, but in a good way.

I can't remember too much that singled Anna out as a unique heroine, she was mostly just average and so was St. Claire (to me at least, some other reviewers I've read call him swoon-worthy) but their problems were a-plenty and that's what kept my lamp burning. I'd say the real heart of this story is Anna and St. Claire's growing friendship. Hey let's face it, teenager's are sometimes fickle, they go out with one person and flirt with another. At least that's what I'm getting from books and TV show's these days. I think their trying to express that teenagers are still growing, learning and developing, so they don always know what they want, or how to handle situations even though their indecisiveness is terribly annoying for a reader, particularly this one :P. So Anna develops a crush on St. Claire right away, that happens sometimes, but it does deepen and mature as the story progresses and for that I give Perkin's two thumbs up. :D I also get the same from St. Claire, he's a boy with a lot of daddy issue's and mommy issue's and "I don't want things to change" issue's which hold him back for almost 300 something pages. I Loved the side characters, Anna's group of friends at her Paris school were nicely fleshed out but they didn't hog the spotlight, and like Anna and St. Claire, they also made a lot of stupid mistakes, had fights, and made up. There were some silly "Did she mean to write that?" moments in the book (particularly during a scene where St. Claire is showing our heroine around Paris, it's one of those "welcome to -insert name of place-" scene's that when not written properly are really clunky sounding) but other than that very solidly and consistently written. This is probably the first hard core romance I've read without the added paranormal affect, and it was a very interesting experience. I'm just not sure if I want to repeat it or not.

Content: lots of sexual references and harsh language, this one's definitely not for the kiddies.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5

Recommend: Yes for romance fans, and people who like reading about characters feelings for 372 pages (I usually don't) the rest of your should go read something else.