Synopsis (taken from Goodreads.com):
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. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend.
But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss?
Review:
Oh my where do I begin? This book is like godsend to me. I've heard booktubers raved about this book but I had my scepticisms so I never bothered to actually pick it up. Besides I've never seen it on any shelves at any of the bookstores near me. Until one fateful encounter (yes, I'm being super dramatic here) at Bonjour, a small french cafe in Arrowtown, I found that they were selling a copy. Bought it without much thought and the rest was history!
Despite the tacky title and cover, I'm glad that I gave this book a shot because contemporary YA novels don't interest me anymore after reading dystopia and paranormal for so long. Having growing up with Meg Cabot and her counterparts throughout my teen years, I've read them all so I'm tired of the usual contemporary teen cliche. Girl-likes-boy-so-the-whole-book-is-about-her-getting-boy-to-take-notice-and-turns-out-boy-has-been-crushing-on-girl-all-along. No author in my knowledge ever focuses the dilemma of getting together with someone who is not available. I digress but you do get a lot in most contemporary adult novel but most of them involve a lot of clothes ripping and carnal desires so the emotional connection is lacking. Perkins illustrates this dilemma so well without it being too annoying.
To a certain extent I can relate to Anna on most levels.
What I love about the book the most is that Perkins captures the essence of studying abroad so well. Having recently graduated from uni and moved back to Malaysia, this novel brings me back to my first year in NZ. The emotional turmoil that I had to go through, finding new friends and settling in with a culture so different from my own. The author did this so well that I just can't arghh-!
Perkins' writing style is really easy to get into and this easy style of hers assures her readers very well. The reason I mention this is because many new authors that I have encountered struggle to assure the reader into "buying" their story. I've been trouble getting into some of the books I've bought so it was a huge relief that I manage to "get into" AFK.
The dynamic and exchanges between Anna and St Clair are realistic and I do actually think that is how most relationships start out. Perkins doesn't try to create perfect characters with absolutely perfect qualities. Instead she states their flaws evidently where description requires. For the reader, she is not Anna but merely an observer. St Clair is not the perfect guy but he is "beautiful" to Anna and that made me love the pair. I like how Perkins does not enforce the readers to believe that St Clair is this perfect model of a guy but instead a "beautiful" boy in Anna's eyes. I like that. To me this shows how Perkins acknowledges how smart her readers are. Given this is YA, most contemporary romance writers tend to generalize or present their "perfect" ideals and enforce this on the reader.
All in all, this shows that one must never judge a book by its cover and title.
Anna and the French Kiss is definitely a diamond in the rough. Give it a shot! This is not some overly cliched fluff!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Obsession Rating: 5 out of 5
