Before I get into this review, I feel like this is one of those books that is so widely loved that I should offer a disclaimer: please, know that just because this story didn’t work for me, does not mean that I am insulting the bookish taste of anyone who loves this book/series. Now that that’s out of the way… I have a lot of feelings about Anna and the French Kiss.

“Boys turns girls into such idiots.”

First, let’s talk about the positives. The writing in this book is fun and it flies by in a breeze; I mentioned this when I reviewed There’s Someone Inside Your House, but I think Stephanie Perkins is just such a fun storyteller and I find it so easy to get sucked into her stories and to find myself rooting for the relationships she crafts, because they seem to follow this track record of combining just the right amount of angst with a lot of cuteness and chemistry.

“French name, English accent, American school. Anna confused.”

I also loved the setting of the story! I’m a sucker for boarding school settings (blame my growing up in the HP fandom, what can I say?), and I liked the idea of this whole girl-gone-abroad ordeal. I was also initially sucked into the romance between Anna and St. Clair; they had killer chemistry from the start, and I won’t lie, I wanted to root for them a little, even though something about their relationship didn’t set well with me the whole time (besides the obvious of, you know, months of emotional and sometimes physical cheating).

“I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”

The further away from reading it I got, and the more I discussed it with others, the more I realized that I couldn’t really approve of the messages in this book. After watching this video review (which sums up all of my issues and then some, while being way more entertaining than I ever could be), I felt so validated in my concerns that I lowered my rating to 2 stars. Below, I’m just going to run through a quick list of things I struggled with:

• the cheating: holy shmoly, the romanticization of emotional and physical infidelity is strong here

• victim-blaming: Ellie, St. Clair’s girlfriend, isn’t the nicest person, but she still doesn’t deserve to be cheated on; somehow, though, the book manages to vilify her so thoroughly that Anna at one point literally even fantasizes about brutally attacking Ellie just to get her out of the picture

• girl-on-girl hate/drama: seriously, Anna is determined to hate and/or treat poorly every girl she meets. Ellie is the wicked girlfriend, her best friend from Atlanta dates a boy Anna was interested in but never established anything “real” with (and sorry honey, you were in another continent for a year—girl code only goes so far in this scenario!), her best friend in France is also in love with St. Clair and it becomes soooo much unnecessary drama and toxicity… I could go on, but I won’t.

• slut-shaming: because Anna feels the need to comment on every single revealing outfit she sees, especially when it’s Ellie wearing a—gasp!—revealing Halloween costume.

• St. Clair’s wishy-washy asshole tendencies: because honestly, he might be cute and Ameri-brit-frenchish, but Ellie isn’t the only lady he treats like garbage. He is super obviously into Anna for ages, but strings her along because he’s too scared to end his current relationship, and frankly, his refusal to commit to either of them should have left him empty-handed if this were the real world.

• Anna’s attempts at forcing jealousy: Anna literally dates another boy, who she has no interest in and doesn’t even want to spend time with, JUST in hopes of making St. Clair jealous. Letting the object of your affections see you flirt with someone else to get a rise out of them is a trope as old as time, but she legitimately strings this poor child along for a fair amount of time, which makes her just as gross as St. Clair is.

I feel like I’m forgetting things and this is one of those reviews that I should’ve written as soon as I finished the book, but alas, this thing is already long enough as it is. The only reason I’m giving it 2 stars instead of 1 is because, as I mentioned earlier in the review, Stephanie’s writing voice itself is fun and breezy. There’s a definite reason behind the fact that so many people had similar situations to myself, wherein they were having fun (albeit perhaps feeling uncomfortable) while reading this book, but after putting it down, began to feel very angry or disappointed.

So, here we are—will I continue this series? I honestly don’t know. Will I read more by Stephanie Perkins? Yeah, honestly, I will—I liked her latest release a lot and I think she’s probably grown tremendously as an author since this story first released. That said, this one is going in my unhaul pile.

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Buddy read with Reg!