Review (Becky): Anna and the French Flop

Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Pages: 372
Genre: Contemporary Realism
Audience: Young Adult
Rating: One and a half stars- I'd run away from this book if it tried to hug me.

Adapted Goodreads Summary:

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta.  She has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. She is less than thrilled to learn she's being shipped off to boarding school in Paris - until she meets Etienne St. Clair: perfect, Parisian, and utterly irresistible. Unfortunately, he's taken, and Anna's still uncertain about the boy she left in Atlanta. 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

This book was a giant block of cheese, and not the delicious French kind.  It was Velveta.  I am no great fan of straight romance stories, except the gothic variety, so this book might appeal more to those who like the genre.  I feel I must mention, however, that the characters in this book were so bland they made vanilla look exotic.  They were all rich kids with highly dramatic "problems" they invented for themselves.  For example, Anna doesn't have as much spending money as all the other extremely wealthy kids, Josh skips class for an unexplained reason, and Mer is too into football.  They were also fairly indistinguishable.  The biggest difference between the detestable Dave and "swoon-worthy" St. Clair was that Dave had "little boy hands".  

I never connected to Anna, needless to say.  She seemed very average and catty.  She was obsessed with having a boyfriend, but everyone in this book was.  St. Clair was always flirting with Anna but he was just "too nice" to break up with his girlfriend.  It's obviously much kinder to string her along but secretly spend all your time with someone else.  Anna was a "Bella" character, in that she had no idea she was actually beautiful and that everyone everywhere was actually attracted to her.  She didn't get along well with any female friends and she was clumsy.  I kept waiting for the sparkling vampires.

I did like two things about the book: the weirdly romantic descriptions of French food/coffee, and the hints of French culture, though they were ridiculously few.  I mean...they are IN France after all.  I would recommend this to fans of cheesy romance, but I'd take a badly written horror novel over this any day of the week.