Poudelivre

I’ve heard a lot about Stephanie Perkins’ Anna and the French kiss and I was surprisingly excited to see what it was about, for someone who usually doesn’t read books like this. I knew the basics around the story before I opened the book but it turned out I was still in for a treat!

Anna is a seventeen year old girl who is sent out to Paris for a year of boarding school, which her father thinks will be great for her. Anna herself isn’t very excited, she has a best friend in her home in Atlanta and a guy she has a crush on and seems to be interested in her aswell. She’s not sure if things will hold after a year spent abroad. But when she arrives at the School of America in Paris, she immediately befriend her next-door neighbor Meredith and are soon introduced to Meredith’s other friends, Rashmi, her boyfriend Josh and the very handsome St. Clair. Anna quickly realizes that practically every girl in school has a crush on St. Clair and she’s determined not to be one of them. Not only because she has a love interest back home, but also because St. Clair has Ellie, his long termed girlfriend. But as the weeks turn into months and Anna steadily gets more secure in her new surroundings, a friendship between her and St. Clair blooms up. And it doesn’t take very long for Anna to realize that maybe being friends with St. Clair isn’t as easy as she first thought. And that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t want to just be friends with her, either.

Somewhere I believed that Anna and the French kiss would be a very lighthearted book, but there where patches and parts that wasn’t very happy and light after all. They gave a lot to the story, though, and I’m glad that they where there. Then there where parts and moments that was so crystal clear and perfect that I just wanted to stay in them for a long, long time. It’s a romantic book about more than just love, it’s about friendship and new places and challenges and fear. And overcoming those things and working to be a better person, a stronger person. Someone who stays even though it’s hard.

I have to admit, Anna and the French kiss wasn’t quite as I’d imagined it. I thought it would be more from the love point of view, but there’s more than just that in this book. At some point I did think there was almost too much other things that put the main story on hold, but at the same time, all those things needed to happen. This is also one of those books where you say “Just one more chapter” and before you know it it’s three more chapters. I really did love the setting in the book and the world Perkins created in Paris. There were moments I wished I could be there, be a part of it all, because it just seemed like a really nice life. And I wasn’t very happy when I realized that the book was ending all of a sudden, that I wouldn’t return to Paris and the School of America and Anna’s life.

This isn’t really the kind of book I usually read but I have realized that sometimes you need something light and soft, like Anna and the French kiss, on your shelf, to weigh out all the other things you normally read. And even though I said to myself before I started reading that I wouldn’t go for another one of Perkins books, I feel like I have to take that back now. Because her writing is soft and funny and it made me laugh and I’m glad I read this because for a moment I wasn’t living here. I was living in Paris, with Anna and her crazy and entertaining life. And being able to go away from the real world for a moment when reading, well, I believe that’s what reading is all about. Escape. And I escaped with Anna and the French kiss.