Anna and the French Kiss
Apr. 16th, 2020 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearAnna and the French Kiss is a contemporary YA romance by Stephanie Perkins, which is the next book being reviewed on my favourite podcast, Novel Predictions. And it's really not aimed at me, or the sort of thing I would normally read. Plus, I read it on my Kindle, since I can't go to the library at the moment, and I really don't like reading on a screen.
So, I feel a bit mean giving it a bad review - but I didn't enjoy it all that much. It started off okay - Anna is sent to boarding school in Paris for her senior year, and meets lots of cool people. I liked her fish-out-of-water situation at the start, the school is well evoked, and the group of friends she makes is varied and I liked most of them. But the teen romance stuff just had me rolling my eyes so damn hard, particularly in the second half.
There's lots of will-they-won't-they, lots of misunderstandings and unnecessary arguing, a love-triangle/possible cheating trope, which is always annoying. And then it doesn't really go anywhere interesting. Anna has a hobby of reviewing movies, which she wants to turn into a career, and that crops up every now and then. But she also uses another (perfectly nice-seeming) boy to make her crush jealous, and that boy turns out to be a jerk, just so we don't feel bad for him that she's not really interested.
And, just - huge sigh, really. But it's not aimed at me, and I probably would have been a lot more invested in the romance when I was seventeen. So I feel kinda mean.
So, I feel a bit mean giving it a bad review - but I didn't enjoy it all that much. It started off okay - Anna is sent to boarding school in Paris for her senior year, and meets lots of cool people. I liked her fish-out-of-water situation at the start, the school is well evoked, and the group of friends she makes is varied and I liked most of them. But the teen romance stuff just had me rolling my eyes so damn hard, particularly in the second half.
There's lots of will-they-won't-they, lots of misunderstandings and unnecessary arguing, a love-triangle/possible cheating trope, which is always annoying. And then it doesn't really go anywhere interesting. Anna has a hobby of reviewing movies, which she wants to turn into a career, and that crops up every now and then. But she also uses another (perfectly nice-seeming) boy to make her crush jealous, and that boy turns out to be a jerk, just so we don't feel bad for him that she's not really interested.
And, just - huge sigh, really. But it's not aimed at me, and I probably would have been a lot more invested in the romance when I was seventeen. So I feel kinda mean.
