Book Thoughts: Anna and the French Kiss

Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins

I read this looking for a quick, fun, light-hearted read, and I was not expecting the emotional intensity that I found.

This book is fantastic. Absolutely freaking fantastic.

Anna is at an international boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school. She misses her best friend and maybe-boyfriend back home, she misses the way she always thought her senior year would be, she misses home. But Paris has its draws -- including clever and charming (and taken) Etienne St. Clair.

I was expecting a cliched and cutesy story of girl-meets-foreign-boy. While it is definitely an adorable story of girl meeting foreign boy, it is not the cliched and cutesy read I was expecting. The characters seem so realistic and they have genuine emotional depth and I really love Anna as a narrator and it was so much fun to read about her. I cannot say enough good things about this book! St. Clair is awesome, Anna is a fantastic narrator and protagonist, the other cast of characters is fun too, and that's just the characters. The writing is brilliant, the story is engaging and endearing...

I was looking for something light-hearted and uplifting when I started Anna. I was worried for a little that there was going to be way more depth and genuine emotion than I was expecting but I could not stop reading. I was so engaged I'm pretty sure I actually cried at one point. But when I finished, I was able to put it down feeling the sense of lightheartedness I'd been looking for (and wishing for more adventures of Anna and St. Clair. Fortunately, they make a guest appearance in Lola and the Boy Next Door!).

I definitely recommend this one.

Book Thoughts: Infinite Days

Title: Infinite Days
Author: Rebecca Maizel
Series: Vampire Queen #1

I received an ARC of Infinite Days through LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and while I was excited to read it, I was a little wary of reading yet another vampire novel. I shouldn't have worried. With this one, Rebecca Maizel has completely remade all the rules. It's a completely new take on vampirism and I really, really loved it. It was also great to see vampires portrayed as the "bad guys" for the first time in a long time. I could have enjoyed it just for that. But there was so much more. It was a fantastic book.

Lenah is a wonderful character. Her emotions are so real, and the way she reacts to being in the twenty-first century for the first time is spectacular. It's a lot of fun watching her adjust to the modern world, getting used to the technology and the slang. You can really get inside her head. And the side characters were awesome too. Justin is a popular guy with depth to him, and Lenah's first friend in the human world, Tony, is easy to imagine just stepping off the page and coming to life. I felt like the "Three-Piece," the popular girls who date the most popular guys, could have been developed more than they were, but on the whole, the characters were excellent.

And the plot! Yes, it's a vampire romance novel, but it's so different from anything that's already out there. Lenah's relearning what it means to be human, what it means to have human senses, and that includes falling in love. The developing relationships between Lenah and Tony and Lenah and Justin are beautifully crafted, and the impending danger of the coven is really well-done too. There's a lot of mystery surrounding the ritual used to make Lenah human, and the reader gets really engaged in that.

Most of Lenah's vampire life is revealed through flashbacks, so she's really telling two stories at once: what's happening now, in the present, and how she got to be there. The flashbacks aren't necessarily continuous, which can get a tiny bit confusing, but it tells the story effectively. And almost all of the flashbacks are really well-done. Some of my favorite scenes were in the flashbacks.

So, in short, Infinite Days is a really great novel with an awesome new twist on vampire mythology and characters that you will not want to let go of. Definitely worth reading.

Book Thoughts: Kiss Me Kill Me

Title: Kiss Me Kill Me
Author: Lauren Henderson

[[As you will notice, this is a fairly old review, one of the first I ever did. I stand by my love for the series, though!]]

My first book recommendation of the summer is Kiss Me Kill Me by Lauren Henderson. I picked this one because 1) I just finished reading the sequel, Kisses and Lies, and 2) it's a fairly quick but riveting read - something you don't have to spend hours poring over but can still enjoy.

Kiss Me Kill Me is about sixteen-year-old Scarlett Wakefield. She's a gymnast, and she's not exactly in with the popular crowd at her school. She dreams about kissing Dan McAndrew, her secret crush - which, as long as she's on the outside, will never happen. Naturally, Scarlett is excited when she suddenly gets invited to a party with the popular crowd. Especially because Dan is there. And then all of her daydreams come true - she and Dan are alone on the terrace, and they share a magical, wonderful, perfect kiss.

Until Dan suffocates in her arms.

Everyone assumes that Scarlett is somehow responisble for Dan's death. She transfers to Wakefield Hall Collegiate, a prep school run by her grandmother, to get away from the press and the hatred of the other girls at St. Tabby's - where she finds an anonymous note telling her that it wasn't her fault. And so, Scarlett sets out to clear her name and find out the truth behind Dan's demise.

Kiss Me Kill Me kept me turning pages until I finished and then longing for the sequel (which, as I mentioned, I just recently finished - it was just as amazing as the first). A wonderful combination of dark mystery and the drama of prep school life, and one I would definitely recommend.