What I Cookied Up

A few book reviews ago I started the section of “What I Cooked Up.”  This is a section I created to highlight some goodie inspired by the book.  Recently, I was going through some photos from a few months ago and I came across this:

Anna picked out the colors for her lips.

I wish I would have had it for the “Anna and the French Kiss” review because it was too perfect.  (My daughter’s name is Anna and this was her cookie kissy lips.)  So, I decided to do it anyway.  Call it recycling.

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Book Review: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Cover Me:  Sweet.  Probably the lamest description to give a cover, but this one is so sugar coated with adorable goodness, I was concerned about getting cavities.  From the lime green French script used in the title to the naive looking girl in white, it screamed “innocent.”  I have to admit, it was one of the things that kept me from reading the book sooner.  I worried it was going to be too nice and not enough interest.  But the masses loved it and I had to see what all the hype was about. 

Concept:  Anna is shipped off to a French boarding school for her senior year by her famous novelist father (I rolled at these parts poking fun at the types of novels he creates.)  She deals with new relationships, insecurities, and loneliness in a foreign place, literally.

The Peeps:  The biggest draw in this book is Anna.  Her “voice” is fabulous.  It’s one of those things you hear about all the time in the lessons of writing.  In fact, the reason I picked up this book was due to the first sentences being highlighted at the writers conference I recently attended.  Stephanie Perkins does a great job of writing so smoothly, it comes off completely genuine.  This is reiterated in the thousands of reviews on B&N from teens who enjoyed it.  If I could have half that “voice” in my books, I’d be one happy (and probably agented) camper.

The boy has an English accent.  Isn’t that all I need to say?  You know the moment they meet he’s “the one” and spend the next 250 pages getting there.  St. Clair is fabulously identified by his English sayings and teaches another writing lesson about making your characters’ dialogue sound different.  Is it obvious how jealous I am of this author?

The Ending (spoiler alert!):  Hold on to your hats for this shocker…the boy and girl end up together.  Honestly, if they didn’t I would have been pissed.  I did get a little worn with the going back and forth, but I stuck with it.  There wasn’t anything shocking or unique in the ending.  It was happy.  That’s about it.

I’m not yet sure if I feel let down about this or not.  It’s what I wanted.  There would have been an angry wrath today if they didn’t kiss and live happily ever after.  But it was the packaging of everything else that left me uneasy.  All the other relationships work out too.  Even the friends who were a couple the entire novel have broken up amicably.  I think that’s where it lost me a bit.  The ending was too clean of anything lost, a little too innocent.  But I guess that brings me back to the beginning where the cover implied the story of the book.  It was sweet.

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