Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Title: Anna and the French Kiss

Author: Stephanie Perkins

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile

Release Date: December 2, 2010

Source: Purchased
Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Anna was 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. So she’ s less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris--until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend.

But in the City of Lights, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss? Stephanie Perkins keeps the romantic tension crackling and the attraction high in a debut guaranteed to make toes tingle and heats melt.

Despite all the good things I had heard about it, I didn’t read Anna and the French Kiss until quite recently. Let me say that once I started, I didn’t stop. No matter how many times I told myself I would stop after the next chapter, I just kept reading on. It was that good a book.

Anna was perfectly happy to spend her senior year of high school at home in Atlanta where she has her family, her friends and a potential boyfriend. But her dad decides it would be better for her if she went off to boarding school in Paris. Though Anna doesn’t like the idea at first, she realizes Paris may not be so bad after all. And of course Etienne St. Clair just might have something to do with that. Unfortunately for Anna, St. Clair also happens to have a serious girlfriend. But who knows what can happen when you’re in one of the most romantic cities in the world.

Even now that I’m done reading, I just can’t seem to get over how cute and adorable this story was. Not only that but it reminded me of my high school experience overseas, mine wasn’t a boarding school or in Paris but it was still similar. While those similarities drew me into the story, what kept me reading was the writing. This isn’t an action-packed story but the way Stephanie Perkins writes it makes you want to just keep on reading. No matter how many times I told myself to stop reading, I didn’t do so until I realized it was 3 AM and I really had to go to bed. It was just a really adorable story that you can’t help but love and want more of.

As for the characters, they were absolutely great. I loved Anna right from the start. Not only was she a really realistic character but she was also extremely likeable. I just couldn’t help but hope that she would get what she wanted and that everything would work out for her. And then there was Etienne St. Clair. St. Clair has pretty topped my list of literary crushes. I could just picture him in my mind and hear his accent in my head and I wished I was in Anna’s place. He was just a genuinely good guy and you couldn’t do anything but like him. Basically, there were moments where I was pretty jealous of Anna.

Anna and the French Kiss was absolutely adorable and I loved every single page of it. Stephanie Perkins wrote a fantastic story and I absolutely can’t wait to read her next book, Lola and the Boy Next Door.