Anna and the French Kiss is Stephanie Perkins's debut in the book world and has subsequently written two companion books for this one, creating a series containing characters that are interlinked but each book focuses on separate couples. Anna and the French Kiss focuses on Anna Oliphant and her new life in Paris at school and her developing relationship with Étienne St. Clair.
Rating: 8
Recommended To: A young female audience, late teens/early twenties
Favourite Characters: St. Clair - the way he is with Anna and what he goes through
Favourite Part: St. Clair wanders around, picking up things and examining them like I did in Meredith's room. He inspects the collection of banana and elephant figurines lined up on my dresser. He holds up a glass elephant and raises his dark eyebrows in question. - Page 64
Good Points: Anna loves her films; the use of emails
Bad Points: Time goes very quickly; not a good use of the friends Anna makes at school
In Anna and the French Kiss, the protagonist is Anna Oliphant, the daughter of a well-known American author who has divorced from Anna's mother, leaving her to raise Anna and her little brother; Anna is sent to boarding school in Paris by her father, leaving her family back in Atlanta. Anna is obsessed with films and has a major crush on a guy she was working with at the film theatre she had been working at over the summer and is gutted when she is forced to leave. However, Paris is the City of Love and no matter how cliché it is, the reader anticipates that Anna will meet someone she will fall in love with in Paris and not someone she knew back in Atlanta.
With the book being told solely from Anna's point of view, the use of first person narrative is effective as it keeps the focus on her and the way she thinks and what she loves.
One thing I connected with in this book was Anna's love of films as I too love films; granted she is more into the classics that have more story and less effects in them while I love more modern films that are filled with action but I still connected with this part of Anna. This love of films gave her a sense of reality as many characters in books aren't described having hobbies. Much like how Anna connected with St. Clair as he introduced her to the film theatres and their format, I also would like to bond with someone over films but this is just one girl's dream, no matter how silly it is.
The slight change of writing style by using the emails to keep the narrative flowing much like the conversations that are held in the actual narrative when she's with her friends and family. The use of emails allude to how close Anna and St. Clair really are as they are pretty much the only emails that are featured in the book though Anna mentions that she has emailed other friends from Atlanta when she's away in Paris and from her boarding school when she's back home for the holidays. Anna's and St. Clair's emails suggest a closeness and provide an anticipation of closeness between the two of them for the reader which a number of books seem to do.
Be warned, not a major spoiler in this next paragraph but still a spoiler.
St. Clair is definitely my favourite character in Anna and the French Kiss because he has an interesting background with him having a multitude of nationalities in his lineage; his family on his father's side are French and English while mother's side are American and he defines himself as American while being raised in England. I find this part of his character interesting as it is quite in depth and makes him quirky in comparison to the other characters Perkins has created for this world. Unlike the rest of Anna's friends, St. Clair's family is brought into the book just as much as Anna's and it shows how important it is to him and how much it defines who he is; the way he reacts to what happens to his mum, with her being diagnosed with cancer, is something that made me question how I'd react as well because it's one of these you'd think about but would never know until it happened. With this point in mind, this book could bring a debate to mind which in its self is interesting.
Unfortunately for me, one aspect I didn't like about this book was how quickly the time went over the course of this book. I knew it was going to be a year of someone's school life but it would have been more effective for a developing relationship concentrated over a shorter amount of time; the dawdling with the relationship as St. Clair refuses to break up with his girlfriend for Anna who he clearly wants to be with. The title of this book for me alluded to it just being a French kiss that Anna, not an entire relationship and this might be why I think this book is slow.
Another thing that frustrated me about this book was that Anna's friends weren't used as much as I thought they would. Perkins could have used them more rather than just using them flippantly; for example, they are just briefly mentioned in parts as the time passes and the focus is primarily on Anna and St. Clair. In my opinion, this book could have been a coming of age story for Anna with her friends becoming a supportive group around her and the slow development of her relationship with St. Clair would be easier to comprehend as it is far too slow for my liking.
St. Clair wanders around, picking up things and examining them like I did in Meredith's room. He inspects the collection of banana and elephant figurines lined up on my dresser. He holds up a glass elephant and raises his dark eyebrows in question. - Page 64
This part of the book where St. Clair finds out about Anna's nickname made me laugh and became my favourite part except for the end because it's quirky and made me think about how my name could be turned into random objects as well as my friends which made me laugh even more.
With the rest of Stephanie Perkins's series, she changes the focus of her books onto different characters; one being Isla Martin who was briefly mentioned in Anna and the French Kiss. Hopefully I will like the next book because this was something nice to read and wasn't as overwhelming with action as my other books where there are deaths and injuries throughout various stories.
Predictions
1. Anna and St. Clair become confidants for the new protagonists of the next books
2. The protagonists of the next book become couples and become confidants for the book after them
3. A lot of love and complicated relationships
3. A lot of love and complicated relationships
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