Anna and the French Kiss

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did, and I mean that in the best possible way. I don't normally read contemporary romances, much less YA contemporary romances. But this book was utterly charming, a lovely little teen fantasy. I gobbled it up like so much candy.

This is another example of "Bookstagram made me do it!" I snatched a free copy of this book on my Kindle a week or two ago, and started reading it on the train as something I figured would be easy and fast. I was right about the easy and fast - this was the first book I've read in a long time that gave me the couldn't-put-it-down feels.

The plot moves quickly through Anna Oliphant's senior year at an American boarding school in Paris. She (predictably) falls in love with her popular and adorable classmate, Etienne St. Clair, an American-French boy with a British accent and perfect hair. But their love story is mostly about how they become best friends, and then how they resolve their feelings for each other in the midst of being horrible to their other friends and love interests. It's all very teen drama, but I found it realistic instead of manufactured. Anna and St. Clair both act exactly how I'd expect 17 and 18 year olds to act. And their budding friendship-turned-love is something I've experienced with the same welter of confusion and terror of ruining a good thing.

The other characters in the novel were not entirely multidimensional, but they were still compellingly realistic. Paris was described in such a way that I could feel its atmosphere and taste its cuisine. The pacing was decent, and obviously I was drawn in to Anna's world enough that I wanted to keep reading after each chapter ended.

The only thing keeping this a four star review instead of five was the neatness of the ending being a bit too Happily Ever After for me. Everyone seems to get what they want (or need) and no character is left upset. That's probably fine, but it leaves me rolling my eyes just a bit.

Anyway! My one word for this book is CHARMING and I'm sticking with it.



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Steeplejack

Steeplejack by A.J. Hartley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We say we are all equal in Bar-Selehm, but you know as well as I do that that is not even close to being true. You cannot simply take people's land, property, freedom from them and then, a couple of hundred years later, when you have built up your industries and your schools and your armies, pronounce them equals. And even when you pretend it is true, you do not change the hearts of men, and a great deal of small horrors have to be ignored, hidden, if they myth of equality is to be sustained."

Steeplejack is set in a fantasy version of Victorian-era South Africa, complete with all of the racism you'd imagine such a setting would contain. Ang, the main character, is a teenage girl from the slums on the edge of Bar-Selehm. She's an unwanted third daughter, but she's found a living working as the only female steeplejack in the Seventh Street gang - so basically she climbs chimneys and fixes/cleans them. The story follows her as she discovers her new apprentice has been murdered as part of an elaborate plot Ang is driven to find the source of.

Steeplejack being published in 2016 (and my reading it after the 2016 US presidential election) feels very timely. I chose the above quote to help sum up the book because this fantasy is really about a very real problem: historic tensions between people based on the color of their skin. There are protests in the city and attempts to incite international incidents. And at the heart of everything is a struggle among the elite for power and money.

Ang's personal struggles are dramatic, but relateable. She's still grieving for her father two years after his death. She wants to get along with her sisters, both distant from her for very different reasons. She feels guilty for removing herself from her own culture, but disagrees with the heart of their rules. She's self-sufficient, but insecure. She's invested in helping those too weak to be able to help themselves, but she questions the effect on her own life.

Hartley's writing style is mostly gripping. I am seriously jealous of his ability to sketch out side characters in a few sentences to the point where I feel like they are complete people I can see and hear. I understand their motivations without their being flat characters. He has an excellent sense of pacing and I found myself eagerly flipping to the next chapter to find out what happened next. But there was a lot of info dumping in the beginning of the book relating the history of the city that I felt he could have easily conveyed as the facts became especially relevant. I also had some difficulty understanding Ang's motivations at times - for a seventeen year old girl, she's unusually responsible and ... patriotic? I'm not sure what the word would be, but she often does things in defiance of her own survival to preserve the city.

My biggest disappointment (view spoiler)[ (and this is a silly thing, I will admit) is that I thought Ang and Dahria had AMAZING chemistry and when Ang announced they were going to solve a murder together, my mind immediately flashed on how amazing a slow burn relationship between them could be. Alas, no such luck. It seems instead that Ang is interested in Dahria's brother, her employer Willinghouse. That's fine. I liked the whole Mnenga storyline, and I liked that romance was not a major part of the story in any way. I can see being interested in a future relationship angle with Willinghouse, so I'm not TOO disappointed. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, I was pleased with my decision to read this. It had none of the usual YA tropes I dislike, and the diversity it portrayed was compelling. I'm eager for the sequel!

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Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ray Bradbury is an emperor among wordsmiths. This book provides so much evidence for his place on my pedestal of writers I love and admire and I know I can never match his inestimable talents. As I read Dandelion Wine, I tried to note the particular places where Bradbury's use of language impressed me the most - but I had to stop when I realized I'd be noting something on every single page of this deceptively slim volume.

Dandelion Wine is a contradictory book. It seems to be about a summer in Green Town, Illinois experienced by twelve year old Doug Spaulding. Really, it's about life and death and everything found in between. Two scenes bookend everything else that happens. At the beginning of the summer of 1928, Doug has a sudden realization that he is alive. And as summer dies, so too does Doug realize that he will someday die as well. Doug sets out to record his discoveries that summer with the aid of his younger brother Tom, as well as the many residents of Green Town.

The book unfolds slowly in a series of vignettes all painted with Bradbury's best language. My favorites were: the heartbreakingly sad story of soul mates separated by time, the inevitable death of the old colonel who just wanted to hear the sounds of his past lives one more time, and the departure from Green Town of Doug's friend John Huff. But every story told was familiar to me, like memories of my own life I'd somehow forgotten. The book relates the sort of American childhood spent roaming the town's neighborhoods and playing fast and loose with one's imagination that I experienced.

To sum up, this book felt like the perfect glass of lemonade, tart and sweet and sometimes so cold I could feel literal chills running down my spine. And in the end, I remember it as pure deliciousness. A feast for the senses. Five clear stars from me for this beautiful book.

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