Editors Note: What’s This? Are we a book review website now?
Well no. We’re still doing all the great things you’ve come to love about FresYes. However, this is another from Emma. She’s in 7th grade and a voracious reader. We loved it and thought it just needed to be shared and hope you do too! Have a young reader in your home? We’d love to share their book review too.
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Anna and the French Kiss
By: Stephanie Perkins
It’s summer! And that means lots of reading! Usually this time of year, I find myself floating around in the pool with a cute contemporary, or lounging in my room with a suspenseful mystery. Now technically, I read this book back in October, but one day I woke up, saw this on my bookshelf, and thought I am going to read you again. And what do you know, I finished it 12 hours later. I’m glad to say it was just as heartwarming and funny as the last time.
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins is a contemporary story about a girl who gets flown to Paris, France for her senior year of high school. You would think she would be ecstatic about this, but here’s the catch. She’s all alone and speaks absolutely no French. And on top of that, Anna is being torn away from her best friend, her job, and her home in Atlanta. But that all changes when she meets the charming Etienne St. Clair, and his amazing group of friends. Over time, Anna starts to think maybe a year in Paris wouldn’t be so bad after all.
I can’t get over how realistic and relatable this book is! Lost with no family or friends, no knowledge of the culture, and no skill with the native language, Anna is flustered and scared, but over the course of the book, she learns and adapts to her surroundings, and she uses her friends to do that. I have said over and over again how important it is for the characters to be relatable, and these characters balance each other out so well, that you can easily see yourself in any of these positions. Even then, they were realistic. It didn’t feel like these characters were from a dream or were perfect Mary Sue characters, they all had their flaws and their traits that left them unique.
Another ever important topic I bring up every review is character arcs. Perkins obviously knows what it means for a character to develop and understands how to make them develop smoothly. The developments went with the story and came naturally. The relationship between Anna and St. Clair didn’t just happen, there were ups and downs. They were friends, then best friends, and when things were finally starting to look up and bud into something more, they have a huge argument. Because let’s face it, even the best of friends fights.
And now we come to the whole reason to a book, the plot. Anna and the French Kiss is a contemporary romance, you know what’s going to happen purely because of intuition, so it’s the author’s job to make the story a little less predictable. Stephanie Perkins put just the right amount of angst and twists so that even though you could tell what the ending was going to look like, you didn’t know how the story was going to get to that point. She made it about the journey, not the destination.
Anna and the French Kiss should definitely be on your summer reading list, and just a little advice, this book is best read with a small animal to cuddle with, as it gives the reader the warm and fuzzies.
-ECtheBOOKLION
Buy the Book:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Anna-French-Kiss-Stephanie-Perkins/dp/0142419400
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