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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