Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Release Date: December 2, 2010
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Pages: 372
Format: Hardcover
Acquired: Borrowed
Interest: Series
Age Group: Young Adult
Challenge: 2010 Debut Author
Rating: 5 Stars

Anna was 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. So she's 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? Stephanie Perkins keeps the romantic tension crackling and the attraction high in a debut guaranteed to make toes tingle and hearts melt.

Possibly the cutest, funniest, most romantic YA book I have read in a long time. Normally, I'm not into the teen love type of thing, because as a teen I have seen a lot in my high school, so why believe in that? But when I picked this up, my heart was fluttering in a million different places.

Okay, I loved Anna. She wasn't like most characters you read. I never read about a character who wanted to be a film critic, and the way she is fully honest with herself. And then there's being in a new country in which she knows nothing about and there was just a lot of moments where I laughed a lot because I think she handled being in Paris as well as anyone can.

And then there was Etienne. He did frustrated me a lot. It took me so long to figure why he was being so complicated because it was obvious from the moment he meet Anna he was in love with her, and he was still with his girlfriend and I just wanted to scream. I could feel Anna's frustration when she had to deal with this. What guy you just met spends all of Christmas holiday on the phone with you and feelings won't blossom?

The entire story was written so well that I just flew through the pages and I was incredibly disappointed that it finished so quick. I loved it. There was just something about the story that made it feel fresh and fun! I really hope that in the next books we can run into Anna and Etienne again, but if we don't, the way their story ended was good enough for me.

Fun, fresh, joyful, sweet, and just romantic. It almost made me want to go to Paris and find my own Etienne.