April 05, 2012

Review #4 Anna and the French Kiss - Stephanie Perkins

Parents can be somewhat annoying, can't they? They make us do chores, they give us curfews and the very, very mean examples send us to a fabulous boarding school in FRANCE where we get to meet a ton of cute guys and get to eat nutella-banana- crêpes all the time...at least that's what happens to Anna in "Anna and the French Kiss"

Anna and the French Kiss

Goodreads 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 Etienne St. Clair: perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible. The only problem is that he's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her almost-relationship back home.

As winter melts into spring, will a year of romantic near - misses end with the French kiss Anna - and readers - have long awaited?

I chose to take French in eighth grade. I met my French teacher and regretted it. I chose to quit French a year after that. Since then I've avoided anything that has to do with France. Until - you guessed it - I read this novel. To cut it short: I loved it. The story, the setting, the language, the characters - just beautiful.

I believe that there's different kinds of wonderful books. There's books like Divergent or The Hunger Games that draw you into their story until you're not sure which world is the one you actually belong with. However, Anna and the French Kiss - for me, at least - was just a wonderful, beautiful read that I enjoyed. It is not so much what happens in the book although the plot in my opinion is very well constructed. I was surprised by the things that happened, the many problems that appeared and how they were solved.

What really made me love this book, though, was the way the story was told. The descriptions of Paris and the French, the whole atmosphere in the school and the dorm, the relationships between the characters and how they developed.

Anna was refreshingly ... special, I think you could call it. She has so many different character traits and habits that it feels like getting to know a real girl and not just a fictional character. In addition to that, not one time in the story she made a decision that seemed unreasonable to me. The way she thinks about things and how she treats other people, all her actions just seem normal and you're not asking yourself why on earth she handles things the way she does.

I liked the other characters, too. Some very minor ones were maybe a little bit flat, but that didn't bother me at all. One gets to see some  hot guys - perfect boyfriend material - but also relationships between normal friends and how they change in the process of growing up.

All in all I can recommend this book for really everyone (okay, maybe every girl). I think even readers who usually don't like to read romantic novels or contemporary fiction in general would enjoy this story - and fall in love with everything french ;)

Greetings, the Booksmartie

RATING: 3 out of 3 Smarties

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