Anna and the French Kiss, Stephanie Perkins

"For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home." - Anna and the French Kiss, Stephanie Perkins 

'Anna and the French Kiss' had all the essential ingredients to entice a reader. A beautifully penned plot, immersible characters and a sea bed of charged emotion. Stephanie Perkins succeeded in tackling the worldly theme of love in this YA novel and what's more, in creating the character of Étienne St. Clair she made me fall hook, line and sinker into the book  - and with no anchor to stop myself from falling, I was well and truly trapped.

Anna Oliphant has been sent to Paris to study for her senior year. What she believes will categorically ruin her last year of school, turns out to define and re-shape not just her future, but her personal afflictions and the lens through which she views the world. And whilst this change is indebted mostly to the people she forges bonds with in Paris, it also owes a lot to experience and embarking with white sneakers on the foreign land of independence.

Moving a thousand miles away from home, as daunting as it is for Anna, gives her the chance to be educated not just academically, but in all the pitfalls and beauty that life can offer. Paris may have served its stereotype as being the city of love for Anna, but it also turned out to be the city of identification. At the end of the book Anna was no longer the lost soul stuck in a timeless city. In her own words she had discovered that "home isn't a place. It's a person." and that, for me, was Anna's moment of enlightenment.

The argent of this identification depicted itself in the form of Étienne St. Clair. A human magnetic field - everybody was attracted to him whether they wanted to be his friend or not. Étienne St. Clair was the epitome of Paris in a person: architecturally good looking but with depth to accompany it. There's nothing worse than a fictional male lead who's portrayed as brilliantly good looking but with, as Hermione Granger would say, the emotional range of a teaspoon. Although there were a couple of times many a time when I found myself internally screaming at Étienne to face up to his true feelings, the frustration and agony was worth it.

Chapter 46, page 392. " 'Neuruda. I starred the passage. God,' he moans. ' Why didn't you open it?' "

Enough said.

I loved this book so much that I am seriously considering never returning it back to the library and incurring the fee attached to that dismissal of the library codes of decency. Honestly. But that's the wonderful thing about books. It's not the paperback, strewn surface that matters, it's the story inside and what we retain from that story in our minds that makes reading a beauteous pastime. So whether I return the book to its rightful home or not (I will, I'm not that rebellious) I know that Stephanie Perkins story will stay with me for a long while yet.

Bonne nuit!