Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1)

by Stephanie Perkins

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?

Reviewed by Leigha on

1 of 5 stars

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A high school senior gets shipped off to boarding school and finds Paris to indeed be the city of love.

I absolutely adored the Paris setting. The author did an amazing job describing the scenery and personality of the city. And that's about all I enjoyed with this book...

All the elements were there for a wonderful story - engaging setting, interesting characters, surprising twists. However, I really could not enjoy the romance between Anna and St. Clair. He's in a romantic relationship for the majority of the book despite the very obvious attraction he has with Anna. Instead of respecting his girlfriend or Anna, he continues his relationship with both until he finally breaks up with his girlfriend. I'm sorry, but emotional cheating IS STILL CHEATING. To me, he completely and utterly failed as a romantic lead. Sorry cheater, you need to be alone for a while before attempting to be in any relationship with anybody.

Along with the romance, there was a surprising amount of girl hate in this book. Anna feels jealousy and anger toward her supposed close friends because of their relationship to other guys. While I appreciate Anna finally learning to let go of the hate to embrace her friendships, it saddened me that we really didn't get to see a healthy female friendship in the narrative. I guess it is not surprising considering I didn't see a healthy romantic relationship in the narrative either. I have no interest in reading the companion novels.

tl;dr A well-written novel with cheating and girl hate in spades. Truly disappointing.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 13 March, 2016: Finished reading
  • 13 March, 2016: Reviewed