Written by: Stephanie Perkins
Summary: 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?
Review
I am going to start this review straight off the cuff and say I BLOODY LOVE THIS BOOK! Ever since I read 'Anna and the French Kiss' in 2015 I immediately added it to my favourites. Both times I read this I absolutely flew through it the story is easy to get sucked into that I didn't want to put down until I knew what happened at the end. I am a huge lover of romance stories and this book just tops every romance book I have ever read- in fact I am still trying to find a couple better than Anna and Etienne. If you remotely like romance or are a massive lover of it like me I would highly, highly recommend this book.
Let's start by talking about Anna- the girl the book is named after. She is so brilliantly relatable. Anna is one of the few fictional book characters that I genuinely can see myself in. Her love of films is so resonant to me- I just adored how she longed to be a film critic and not a director or producer. It was not only Anna's interests that I found relatable though but her actual character. She was not a perfect girl- she was flawed, not only physically with her crooked teeth and the white stripe in her hair that some characters mocked but her personality wasn't perfect. She made mistakes like when she kissed Etienne and didn't try to console or explain to Meredith afterwards. I loved this about Anna's character as it made her so much more realistic because real people make mistakes and we learn from them just like Anna did. The way Anna handled moving to Paris was so accurate to how I would have probably handled with it- I love how she started the book totally pissed with her parents for shipping her thousands of miles from home.
Now... Etienne St Clair. Can we just stop for a minute and think about how beautiful that name is? Etienne simply makes my heart burst. For me he is just perfect. Again, like Anna he has his flaws- he acts on impulse quite a few times and can be quite stubborn and out spoken, yet at the same time he was not honest with Anna about his feelings until the very end of the book! But this made his character so much more believable especially since he could easily have just been a one dimensional love interest that was ( quoting Mary Poppins here ) practically perfect in every way. Throughout the book Etienne is just the sweetest guy with all the thoughtful gifts he gives and the Point Zero moment when Anna felt really misplaced and foreign and Etienne took her to the "beginning of everything".
I loved that the premise of the relationship in this book was essentially based on two best friends falling in love- I found it to be a very 'When Harry met Sally' scenario ( also another romance story I love). The constant wondering of how the other felt made the relationship very slow burning and not passionate or lustful whatsoever. The near misses that happen during the book are just so cute and adorable. I loved the thanksgiving part when Anna and Etienne practically acted like a married couple for four days going on so many 'dates' and then sleeping in the same bed. It was so infuriating when Etienne wouldn't talk to Anna about it afterward. Also the Christmas part was so sweet, Anna missing the alarm on the morning of their flight was hilarious I loved how smug Etienne was afterwards. And the emails they sent to each other were so cute and it just showed how strong their bond is. I think my favourite part of the whole book was the Notre Dame scene when they both FINALLY opened up about their feelings towards one another. I always love those parts in romances!
Aside from the romance element of the book I also loved the secondary characters and they were as realistic and believable as Anna and Etienne. I loved the relationships between the five- Meredith, Anna, Rashmi, Josh and Etienne, they felt so genuine and true to life. I thought Perkins did an excellent job at summing up teenage relationships and characters. I think what really added to the book was the whole boarding school element. That for me was the only part I really needed to suspend my disbelief for and wasn't fully able to relate to. But for me I really loved reading about the School of America in Paris because I myself have always wanted to attend boarding school.
So for anyone who is thinking of reading Anna and the French Kiss pick it up now! Or if you have read the book let me know your thoughts and comment below! To end this post I shall leave you with this quote....
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