Daphne's Picks

Anna Oliphant has everything that a rising high school senior in Atlanta could want:  a best friend, a budding romance with a cute punk rocker, a sometimes reliable car, an awesome job, and a rich and famous father.  Actually, Anna could do without that last part.  Now that her father has become James Ashley, the bestselling author of mediocre southern fiction, he feels the need to impress all of his new rich New York City friends.  James is not cultured, but he may be able to appear so if he sends Anna to boarding school.  In France.

Granted, Anna realizes the opportunity that spending a year in Paris is, but she is still upset about getting plucked from her comfortable Georgian life and deposited in a foreign country where she knows no one, nothing, and no part of the language.  And thus the new school year commences with Anna struggling to balance between making new friends and keeping connections with her past; figuring out where she is and finding out who she is.  Enter Etienne St. Clair:  French name, British accent, American citizen (it’s complicated). 

St. Clair is perfect in every way, except his serious relationship with someone who is not Anna.  Which is fine, really, because Anna has a cute guy back in the States.  Besides, Anna doesn’t want to be like every other girl at The School America and swoon whenever St. Clair enters the room.  And so a friendship is formed, a confusing friendship, but one that helps both Anna and St. Clair through some of the most difficult events in their lives.

Anna and the French Kiss is a perfect novel for young adults who are preparing to go off to college or study abroad and a great book for anyone who wants a wish to come true.  Stephanie Perkins has delivered a stunning debut about a year of life changes and romantic tensions that leave the reader waiting and hoping for Anna to finally get her French kiss.

Through a series of letters, emails, memos, diary entries, school assignments, and even phone messages, T.C., Augie, and Alé tell their individual stories of budding friendships, young love, and self-discovery. This is not a coming of age story, it’s a school assignment that requires rising high school Seniors to write about the best year of their lives. The year they write about (because they all choose the same year) doesn’t involve flashy cars on sixteenth birthdays, or electronics for Christmas. Instead, Freshman year was a year of moving to Boston, realizing passion, letting down guards, and standing up for beliefs. When a six-year-old orphan is taken under the wings of the trio, the year becomes one of putting others first and making dreams come true, both for the main characters and their loved ones.

My Most Excellent Year is categorized as Young Adult, but I’ve had fun putting this book into the hands of many adults. It’s not a novel for any particular age, it’s for anyone who has ever experienced the highs and lows of sports loyalty, the butterflies of stage fright, or the unrelenting hope that Mary Poppins will float down and make everything okay.

Tip: I’ve had three customers tell me that after they read My Most Excellent Year they emailed the author, Steve Kluger, and have had wonderful correspondences with him.