4.5 stars! Anna has been sent from Atlanta to Paris by her somewhat pretentious author father to attend school there her senior year. She is not happy about this at all - she doesn't want to leave her best friend and she also has an almost-blossoming-something going on with a guy at the movie theater where she works that she would rather stay home and explore. However, go to Paris she must. Once there, she makes friends with a cast of likable characters, including a good-looking, British-sounding young man named Etienne St. Clair. He happens to have a girlfriend we rarely see, as she finished school the year before and sort of dumped all her friends when she moved off-campus. St. Clair and his girlfriend seem to be on rocky ground. Anna and Toph (the boy back home) - well, aside from what goes on in her head and some back and forth email between them, we don't really know what they are and when Anna goes home for Christmas, she finds out that he has hooked up with her best friend while she was gone and was never really that into her. Anna and St. Clair seem to have a connection that neither one of them will act on. They just keep dancing around it as "just friends." While I could see where all this was going, I completely enjoyed the ride! Great characters, great ending, a little predictable, but that's okay - I really liked it. I loaned it out to one of my students already, and she liked it, too. It's a hit! ( )

This book got on my radar after Rainbow Rowell suggested it. I loved Eleanor & Park so much I assumed she was a good judge of teen romance and she was indeed!

I've been stressed lately and needed something easy to read that wouldn't tax my brain too much and this fit the bill well. I enjoyed all the characters, including the city of Paris, and I liked the meandering journey of Anna and St. Clair.

This is not a serious book or great literature but it's a charming YA romance. I'll read her other titles. ( )

This book was oscillating between one and two stars for the first seventy-five percent or so. It was not easy for me to like this book. Anna is an entertaining narrator, but she's selfish and entitled and overly dramatic, and in some cases that could be an instant deal-breaker. Plus there's Étienne St. Clair, who is so perfect that he's almost impossible to read. There's the fact that Anna can't think about anybody but boys. There's her condescending attitude toward Meredith, her egocentrism in general. And halfway through the book, I was fully expecting it to end with me saying, "Anna, you don't deserve him."
Still, there is something strangely realistic about Anna that I can't ignore. She's self-centered, yes, but in a way that absolutely makes sense. She's a teenager and I can feel it through Stephanie Perkins' writing. I may not like Anna, but I certainly do understand her.
Here's the part that brought the book up to three stars for me: every single issue that I had with it is IMPORTANT. Anna's mistakes and attitude do not go unchecked. St. Clair's situation reveals aspects of his character that make me believe in him more than I thought I could ever believe in an idealized teenage love interest.
I'm still not sure I love this book. However understandable Anna is, I do not like her by any means, but am I supposed to? This isn't a story where the likeable girl gets the boy. It's a story where the girl can't get where she wants to be until she grows the hell up.

EDIT: I figured out why I keep bouncing between loving and hating the book. I expected - and was promised - a funny teenage romance sort of book (not my kind of book necessarily, but something I could still have fun with). I got something else: a book that was so unexpectedly real I didn't even know what to do with it. I actually didn't trust Stephanie Perkins at first, assuming that because her narrator was self-centered with relationship drama as her only problems, the book was going to fail. Ms. Perkins, you proved me wrong. Now I'm a little paranoid; almost certainly I'll spend the next few months worrying that I'm like Anna and hoping to hell that I'm not. ( )

Such a good book. A great story about romance and also finding for self. Such a cool setting and premise. It was a fast read and it reminded me a lot of my self at a younger age. I love the voice of the writer and excited to read more of this series! ( )

Such a good book. A great story about romance and also finding for self. Such a cool setting and premise. It was a fast read and it reminded me a lot of my self at a younger age. I love the voice of the writer and excited to read more of this series! ( )