Follow Anna on her journey to finding home: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Aaah, I'm so excited to review this book! I have to say, it's been a while since I felt inspired by a book that wasn't my own. But over the past few months, my reading goal has been to play catch up on all the books I missed out on reading back when I was a teenager. At 13 and fourteen years old I was obsessed with Candy Apple books and Cathy Cassidy, and Cathy Hopkins. I also really loved the Alex Rider book series by Anthony Horowitz. But I want to step away from what I would've chosen to read back then and focus on other books.

So, let's get into it!

The beginning

There's a lot of emotion in the beginning of the book. Anna seems innocent, yet determined to fit in at her school in France, and she's clearly fascinated by the culture that she also seems overwhelmed by. Meeting the characters was slow and detailed to the perfect extent, which kept me wanting more. The details of the setting were good, as were the feelings I felt when I was in Anna's head. I felt her anger towards her parents, her embarrassment about her father's work, her "I'm the new girl" aura, and her instant attraction to Etienne.

The middle

Stephanie Perkins has done a brilliant job building up the anticipation when it came to the romance. The friendship was also something I really enjoyed-not just between Anna and her other friends, but with Anna and Etienne. For all those scenes where Anna seems very naïve and immature, she makes up for it with intensely mature decisions and loyalty towards her friendship with Etienne. I honestly wish I could be like that, but when I was her age, I was nowhere as mature as she is.

The end

There was something bittersweet yet perfect about the way the relationships concluded between other character-Josh and Rashmi, Meredith and Etienne, Etienne and Ellie. But it still made sense. It made perfect sense.

Conclusion

I would recommend this to anyone who isn't quite interested in reading romance regularly. If contemporary is not your genre, this is the book for you!

It gets five stars, and it's now one of my favorite reads ever.

I hope you liked the review and found it helpful!

Catch you later!

-May