Anna And The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

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

*****

So I've been putting off writing this review because this book was just so... unexpected. Special. Amazing. I'm not the biggest contemporary fan, but with Anna and the French Kiss, I was hooked from the first page. The love interest is irresistible, Anna is a fun, relatable protagonist, and their story is just so sweet and beautiful and all the good adjectives.

I really enjoyed the story being set in Paris. I could really relate to Anna's hesitation of going out in a strange city where she doesn't even know the language. Even though Paris might seem a cliché setting for a romance novel, it wasn't cheesy or just in Paris for the sake of being set in Paris, but the descriptions seemed alive and served as the perfect backdrop for Anna and St. Clair's unfolding romance.

I loved all of the characters and I really enjoyed that it wasn't only focused on the two main characters, but had a varied cast of people who were all dealing with their own problems. While I often feel that contemporary books lack plot, I never got bored with this one. Only towards the end did I feel like the story was a tiny bit dragged out (my mind was just like GET TOGETHER ALREADY), but otherwise, the obstacles Anna and St. Clair had to overcome seemed believable and not just random misunderstandings as it so often happens in bad romantic comedies.

Perkins' writing is so much fun and just so... real that I was always entertained and could picture everything happening right in front of me. Oh, and have I mentioned that St. Clair is irresistible?

I feel like this review just doesn't do this book justice, and I can't really put into words what is so great about it. It just gave me all the right feelings and it was so beautiful that it was almost painful to close the book and come to the realisation that these people aren't actually real. But then, as Dumbledore once said, the things happening inside our heads are real, too. And that is the thought I comforted myself with as I put this book down and immediately ordered the companion novel, Lola and the Boy Next Door.

My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆