Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Rating: ❤❤❤❤❤
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Release date: December 1, 2010
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Summary: Anna has a happy life in Atlanta, with a loyal best friend, and she’s in love with her co-worker, who just recently started to return her feelings, so she isn’t thrilled when her father decides to send her to Paris for her last year in high school.
She goes to Paris, and starts her last year
in School of America, knowing only how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in French.
In Paris, she meets Meredith, Rashmi, Josh
and they become friends. Not to mention Étienne St. Clair, who soon becomes her
best friend. Anna’s year in Paris – “the City of Love” – might not be as boring
as she thought…
My thoughts: I loved Anna and the French Kiss. It had it all;
romance, heartbreak, friends, school drama, family. It was truly an emotional
roller-coaster. I fell in love with Étienne with Anna. I cried with her. I
laughed with her. It was a long time since a book woke that many emotions in
me, which is what makes it so great; it made it impossible to put it away. I
just had to know how it went for Anna and Étienne.
The main character, Anna, was really
relatable. All of the characters were. Anna is a really sweet girl. She loves
her family above all, although she’s mad at her father for sending her to Paris
and for leaving her and her brother, Sean, when they were small. She’s very
caring, although she can seem a little egotistical sometimes, a little too
caught up in her own problems to notice everyone else’s problems, but when she
does notice them, she’s there for them and tries to come with advice. What I
loved so much about Anna was that she knew that she wasn’t perfect and could
admit when she made mistakes.
Étienne was a very lovable character. Sure,
he made mistakes, and it took a long time for him to grow some balls, but I can
forgive him for that. He has some major family problems, with his father being
an idiot, and he doesn’t really talk about him a lot. He takes on the task of
showing Anna Paris, and he soon becomes her best friend. They have a lot of fun
together.
Bridgette and Toph are her friends from
Atlanta. Bridgette, or Bridge, is Anna’s best friend in Atlanta, and is one of
the reasons why Anna doesn’t want to go to Paris. Toph is her co-worker,
friend, and maybe-something-more, and he’s also a big reason why she doesn’t
want to leave Atlanta.
Her new friends in Paris are Meredith, who
is in love with Étienne, Josh, who is very artistic and dating Rashmi, who at
first seems to hate Anna.
I love Stephanie Perkins for not feeling the
need to write about perfect characters that never make any mistakes, like some
authors do, because it’s not realistic. No one is perfect, and just because a
character isn’t perfect doesn’t mean the reader won’t like him/her. On the
contrary, readers like when the characters have flaws and make mistakes (at
least, I do), because it makes them more relatable.
Another thing I really loved about this book
was that the characters really grew throughout the book. I’m not going to make
any examples, because I don’t want to spoil anything, but the characters
learned from their mistakes. It took a while sometimes, but they did learn and
grow. They didn’t excuse their behavior. They didn’t deny to doing anything
wrong.
I also loved the setting. I'm really love Paris, and dream of going there, and this book made me want to go there even more than I did before. It was really believable, and it almost felt as if I was there.
So overall I'm really impressed with Stephanie Perkins. More often than not, I reas books that have either good plot, good characters or good setting. Anna had it all.
And the romance was truly magical. Sparks,
butterflies, the lot, but it also showed the backside of being in love.
And the cover is really cute.
This book was très bien.
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