When Anna's father decides he needs a more cultured family he sends Anna off the School of America in Paris, or SOAP, to clean off all the American dirt with some Parisian suds (sorry, couldn't help it). Upon arrival Anna is lucky enough to be adopted by a clique which happens to include her dream guy, Etienne St. Clair, who also happens to have a girlfriend. There isn't much else to say about the plot because it just follows Anna's year in France and the ups and downs of her relationships and friendships.
At first I thought Anna and the French Kiss was just a fun light romance but once the drama started I redefined it as more of a happy Sarah Dessen type novel. It was fun, but still serious, which made it extremely life-like. Sometimes these sorts of YA novels get too serious and too involved and forget to show the happy parts of life, or at least don't show them well enough to brighten it up significantly, but in Anna and the French Kiss the happy outweighed the sad.
I don't want to say too much about this book because in this case I think less is more, but there were two details I loved that I must share with you. The first was that Etienne is shorter than Anna. I know, it's stupid, but I loved how no one cared. The love interests in these books are usually everything Etienne is plus tall and Etienne set himself apart from all of those losers by actually being unique. The other thing I loved was how the author made fun of Nicholas Sparks by modeling Anna's father after him. The stupid overly-detailed plots involving cancer and an inevitable unhappy ending for somebody were clearly him but what I really liked was how she pointed out how he totally sold out by writing something stupid that sells. My opinion on Nicholas Sparks is that he probably sits there counting his money and laughing at the gullible women who enjoy the emotional trash he writes. It's refreshing to hear that someone else came to the same conclusion I did.
To end on a happy note: READ THIS NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T YET
5 stars
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?
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