1.5 Stars
Anna and the French Kiss was the book I read to make up for Just One Day... well that obviously failed.
I wanted another cute, romantic, Paris book. Anna and the French Kiss did start off kind of cute, but after the half-way point, it tanked hard. I could not finish this book fast enough. In the last quarter in particular I was whipping through those pages because I just wanted it to end!
Honestly, I don't even have enough desire or energy to talk about "the good" in this book, so I'm only going to talk about the bad.
Anna.
I didn't mind Anna at first. I didn't start to dislike her at all until the second half of the book. I hated her when she expected Étienne to leave his girlfriend for her. I hated her when she went out with another guy as a "rebound". I hated that she did things with that other guy (Dave) that she didn't want to do, and she probably just did them to make Étienne jealous. I hated when she got drunk and acted like a complete and total bitch. Also, this paragraph makes her sound totally lame:
Why have I never drunk before? I was such an idiot—it's not a big deal. I totally understand why people drink now. I'm not sure what I've been drinking, but I do know it was something fruity. It started out disgusting, but the more I drank, the better it got. Or the less I noticed it. Something like that. Man, I feel weird. Powerful.
Maybe it's just because I'm not a party girl, but I thought that was a pathetic sounding paragraph.
But I really started to hate Anna when she let Étienne cheat on his girlfriend with her (and that's also when I started hating Étienne). Cheating isn't suddenly "okay" just because the guy is doing it to be with the main character. I don't care if the MC is the one benefitting.. cheating is still horrible and quite frankly, I don't want to read about it. Cheating is a quick and easy way to make me hate any book, and this was no exception.
Then, that was followed up with another doozy. I still don't understand this..
Amanda (the stuck up, queen bee bitch of the school) spends the whole year making fun of Anna here and there. She calls Anna a skunk (because of her hair style), a slut, and just throws in insults all the time. But what pushed Anna to the edge was when Amanda called Anna's best friend a dyke (to Anna, not to the friend). Anna got pissed and kind of tackled/hit Amanda. When they got called into the principal's office, Anna refused to tell the principal what Amanda said that provoked her... WHY? Well, apparently because:
The detention was divided unfairly because I refused to tell her what Amanda said. Because I hate that word. Like being gay is something to be ashamed of.
You hate the word so you refuse to tell the principal when someone uses the word in a derogatory way? WHERE IS THE LOGIC HERE??? Amanda was a freaking bitch using derogatory words and you just let her get away with it because you "hate that word". What the hell??? I literally feel like there's no logic here, and it's still bugging me even after finishing the book.
So as a result of Anna's silence, Anna got two weeks of detention and Amanda got like nothing. Nice one, Anna. I hope you feel like you've accomplished something.
Then after this point, Anna continued to annoy me with her "OMG Étienne hates me" attitude, when he so obviously liked her. It was painful. Everyone knew Étienne liked Anna, despite the fact that he refused to break up with his girlfriend (which was also annoying).. but Anna went around moping and crying about how he hates her and doesn't want to talk to her—boo hoo.
Seriously, towards the end it was just pathetic high school drama that made me want to finish the book as quickly as possible. Ugh.
Signing off,
The Black Sheep