So, I have been avoiding this book for a long while now, because there is so much hype out there about it and we all know how much I hate the hype… But then I kinda started to notice that I hadn’t seen a single bad review about this book. So despite the hype, and the horribe cover, I decided to give it a go.
It was SO CUTE. I finished it in one night.
So Anna is pissed because her rich dad is sending her off to Paris for her senior year of high school, to attend the School of American in Paris. She’s leaving behind her best friend Bridgette, her cute-boy crush Toph, and her family to attend her last year of high school in a foreign country in which she doesn’t even speak the language. But she makes friends, including Etienne St. Clair who is gorgeous and funny and smart… and he also has a girlfriend.
This book was full of adorable. Anna is a sweet character – she’s scared about being in a new country, but she’s nice and funny and an interesting character to spend the book with. She quickly becomes friends with Meredith, Rashmi, Josh, and handome-boy Etienne, and I LOVED the romance between her and Etienne. It wasn’t quite insta-love; there was an attraction there, but the actual romantic feelings took time to grow as they got to know each other better. I really enjoyed watching her friendships with everyone grow, and I loved seeing Paris through her eyes.
Some other things that rocked: Bridgette’s use of big words, Etienne’s love of history and chatting about Rasputin (who I totally want to read a biography about now), and the use of the phrase “insensitive douchebag motherhumping assclown”. I couldn’t stop giggling at that last part. I think mainly what I loved about this book is that it actually did remind me of being a teenager, which surprisingly few YA novels succeed at doing. I remember those feelings of insecurity, those nervous moments with the boy you’re crushing on, the dramatic family life, and… I don’t know. I just think Stephanie Perkins did a REALLY good job at kind of making me feel like a teen again (in a good way). I could easily relate. I also loved that this book mentioned some intelligent things and it wasn’t dumbed down. I even learned a new word: callipygian.
So, Anna was cool and Etienne was awesome and together they’re just uber-cute. Although I admit that I had to picture Etienne as a tall-ish guy in my head, because I don’t like short guys and every time I tried to picture them as roughly the same height the romance-factor dropped. I know, I’m a jerk, oh well.
There is only ONE THING that it keeping me from giving this book 5 stars, but since it happened near the end I can’t tell you. But I highly recommend this book – it was entertaining and I read it practically in one sitting. I got home from work at 2:30 in the morning and stayed up to finish the last 5o pages. It was that good.
Sarah Says: 4 stars
