Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Summary Provided by Dutton Books:

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: 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?

My Thoughts:
It’s very, very rare that a book can make me cry hysterically while at the same time making me feel like a million bucks! This novel is beautiful, amazing, real, funny, and wonderful. The list of adjectives describing the awesomeness of this book can go on forever! It’s that great! Honestly, the only problem with this book is that it ended! I love this book so much I even went up to some random girl at Barnes & Noble last night and told her to she has to read it because it’s the greatest book ever!

Anna and the French Kiss is about Anna, whose father forces her to go to an American boarding school in Paris because he thinks it will be an amazing learning experience for her. Anna is reluctant because she doesn’t want to leave her friends and little brother back home. On her first night alone in Paris, she meets her neighbor, Meredith, who introduces Anna to all of her friends, including the gorgeous, Étienne St. Clair, who everyone calls St. Clair. St. Clair is every girl’s fantasy-beautiful, sweet, smart and bi-lingual (he knows French and English). He’s also American, born in San Francisco, but raised in London, so he’s got that cute English accent that’s just swoon-worthy. St. Clair is a great guy and it really shows.

St. Clair has this horrible father that I just wanted to kill. His father bullies and controls his mom and him, and when his mother is dying of cancer-his jerk of a father won’t even let him visit her. It was very stressful and I was crying for St Clair.

All of the characters were well developed. Even thought the narrative was Anna, I had a good connection with all the supporting characters. St. Clair especially because as mature as he is, he is still afraid of his father and the things he could do to his mom and him and he had to learn to stand up for himself.

Anna and St. Clair have this wonderful connection and I loved watching them go from strangers to best friends. St. Clair had a girlfriend, which kept messing things up, and Anna had this sort-of, but not really boyfriend back home but I wasn’t going to give up on the two of them falling in love. Anna and the French Kiss is a beautifully written love story and Stephanie Perkins delivered! I was also pleased that it wasn’t a “love at first sight” story, it was a love that happened gradually, which is more realistic and hard to find in today’s YA books. This book is the ultimate love story, but it’s also so much more. It’s about growing up and finding yourself.

If I could give this book 100 stars, I would. But, unfortunately goodreads only goes up to five. I would recommend this book to everyone I know, and as I said earlier, even random people at the bookstore!