Review: Anna And The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Title: Anna And The French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Published: December 2nd 2010
Source: Purchased
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
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Caution: May contain spoilers

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 Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend.

But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss?

My Thoughts:

With as many rave reviews as there are for a book, sometimes you can't help but buy into the hype. Of course, some books are more hype than awesome so you have to be careful. Then there are the other books--the ones that are seriously epic in every sense and leave you a tingling mess of swooning and sighing. This book falls into the last category. It's hard to pin this book down into a brief review. There's too much to say. So I'm going to focus on what I liked the most.

Anna's personal journey was pretty amazing in my opinion. What was nice is that while she learned some things from other people, including Étienne, she learned a lot on her own. That, I believe, is the best thing a person can do for themselves--learn on their own. It's good when people can help point you in the right directions, but it's so much better when you wrap your head around something yourself.

Now, the relationship between Anna and Étienne? I cannot begin to express the extent of the swooning incurred as I read their interactions. There's something about their friendship and love that is purely iconic. The way they are together is something that feels like it's out of a movie and real life at the same time. If that makes any sense! I mean, it's so perfect it feels like it's a movie, on the other hand, it's so imperfect it feels like it's real. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me.

Anna And The French Kiss is a book I could probably read about fifty times and never get sick of reading. Not only is the romance full of awesome, but the way all the rest of the characters intermix in Anna's life creates for this perfect blend of tension and comical conversations. You just can't help yourself from getting sucked into this world and wanting to just BE in this world. Stephanie Perkins just blew me away with the way she writes. I cannot wait to get my hands on her other books.

My Rating: