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 Amanda on

5 of 5 stars

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8/19/2014 reread: Still an adorable book and I love it for the same reasons I did in 2012.

Please excuse me as I squee in my pants (to quote Missie). I don’t know that I have ever really done such an act in a review to date, but it was bound to happen eventually, and Anna and the French Kiss is definitely the kind of book that makes you swoon to embarrassing degrees. I want to crawl into Anna’s world and roll around in it (bonus points if I can roll around with St. Clair). Why have I avoided this book for so long? Oh, right. Because it’s a YA contemporary, and I just. don’t. read. those.

Let’s take a few minutes to kick me for pure idiocy.

Yes, it’s true that I can’t handle angst (Woe! Angst!) and there is definitely some of that here. But! (there’s always a but where a good book is concerned; and, let’s face it, good books always have butts in addition to buts) But more than anything, this book feels real. The characters are real and tangible and accessible. Anna had me completely charmed by page 24. It takes a very well written character to have me admitting to being in love with the book by page 24. I am not always so easily charmed, except maybe by Etienne St. Clair.

Anna and the French Kiss made me feel like I was in the book. I read faster when Anna did something stupid and her thoughts raced on. I wanted to eat the cuteness on every page. If you’ve read the book, I think you understand the sentiment. It had me laughing and smiling and smirking and swooning my fool head off, and it did so on a day that I was feeling down and glum and sad. I wanted to point out every real life moment that could be related to and held a valuable lesson, because this is why books are AWESOME.

I stopped writing this review to go look at quotes from the book to see if I could pull out one of favorite FAVORITE parts and I got distracted by the pure awesomeness that is Stephanie Perkins’s writing. My quote isn’t there, so I’ll sum it up here: there’s a part where a teacher discusses translations and what happens to words and meaning when something is translated. And I just about died at how amazing and insightful this part is, because it’s true. It’s true for the story, it’s true from a language perspective, and it’s true for life. LIFE. I want to huggle this book.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 19 August, 2014: Finished reading
  • 19 August, 2014: Reviewed