Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

The Stats:
My rating: *  * * *
Published: Dec 2010
Hardcover, 372 pages

The Review: 
Anna and the French kiss has been raved about since its publication four years ago, but I only just got around to reading it. (I'm pretty sure it's been on my Goodreads to-read list since then too.) It's the first of three connected novels, the last of which was just published this summer (Isla and the Happily Ever After).

This teen romance book centers around Anna Oliphant, a senior in high school who is forced to move to France to attend her final year of school at an international boarding school in Paris. I really like Anna's personality, it's easy to connect with a character that has clear passions and distastes. Anna is especially interested in movies, a theme that comes up throughout and really centers her her thoughts as a character. This interest was really well written by Perkins, I never watch movies in the theaters, I can't stand it, but I totally understand Anna and why she loves it. I found myself connecting even though I normally wouldn't.

The love story in this book is cute, though predictably includes the typical communication problems that make me want to sigh really loudly (I'm not annoyed enough to scream OK). Anna and St.Clair (the hunky American-British-European love interest) get into those fights that would never happen if one had just listened to the other instead of getting all heated. It's the most cliched form of conflict in a love story! But not every love story is free of cliches, and these moments are easily overlooked by the consistently great storytelling. Anna and St.Clair have a beautiful friendship that makes this story unique, it's not a mindless, passionate love story. It's a never-ending 'what did that mean?' questioning. It's a constant struggle of trying to read each other that makes the story so real to me.

Perkins also uses language in a really interesting way, moving in and out of dialogue in varying ways not just "he said/ she said."  She also has a great handle on teenage dialect, British-isms, and helping the reader understand Paris as Anna sees it. I've been there before, only briefly, and I could even relate to some of Perkins' descriptions, I really appreciate when a book has an unfamiliar setting that's real, and not just stereotyped. The author really takes the time to describe the big attractions, like the Notre Dame, but also the little intricacies of the city.

I gave this 4/5 stars, because I did like it but not so much that I would recommend it to people that don't normally read this romance-centric teen fiction. I also don't plan on reading the other two books in the series, though I like the author's style, it isn't quite unique enough to really capture me.