For anyone who is a YA and contemporary romance fan, Anna And The French Kiss is almost a classic of the genre. Most fans would have read it when they enter the fandom of this genre. Penned by Stephanie Perkins in December 2010 it follows Anna a high school senior who leaves the USA to finish high school in Paris where she discovers the city, makes new friends including the handsome and charming Étienne St. Clair who just so happens to have a British accent.

As far as the book goes it’s a four-star read for me. One of my old favourites having read it when I was just starting out high school myself. The characters are fun and fleshed out so that they keep you entertained and the chemistry between Anna and St. Clair is a slow burn sort of best friends to romance one that is well done. It’s filled with lots of drama as, let’s be honest, high school usually is. Complicated teens with hormones. Anna has problems with her friends and she grows from that which I liked. So I quite enjoyed it in totality.

But the star of the book isn’t Anna. Nor is it St. Clair though it’s always nice to have some handsome, hunky eye candy in books. The star of the book is (drumroll please)… Paris! The capital city of France, home to so much more than just French kissing, city of romance, city of lights, city of dreams, city of desserts.

A few days ago I came back from my very own Parisian adventure that I embarked upon with my best friend Julia, and while there I was looking through my kindle for books to read late at night once our feet were sore and tired and chanced upon Anna and the French Kiss. What’s better, I thought than to read a Parisian adventure while I had my own.

One doesn’t realize it but Paris sort of its own character in the novel. It breathes and lives through the characters, an entity apart that is far more interesting than any of the humans in the book. Perkins sort of tracks a journey through Paris as Anna discovers the city. I found myself looking at pictures of places we had already been and marking out more spots I wanted to go. Shakespeare and Company is a tiny bookshop filled with people and a cafe buzzing with a pet honeybee, the books teetering off the shelves, the deep green and gold sign winking at you as you walk across from Notre Dame into the hidden niche where the bookstore hides. It’s described with an air of romance, which is fitting given that St. Clair buys the Neruda book for Anna from here. The Latin Quarter is filled with little bars and pubs and small shops and cafes. It’s mostly a student hub but the cobbled street with the bikes locked in against overgrown creepers, with lots of restaurants for students going to Sciences Po and more to discover. This is actually where Anna’s school SOAP is located.

I desperately wanted to visit Notre Dame but the fire last month sort of shattered my plans and even Point Zero was closed off. While walking the Le Marais, you can see the impressive St. Etienne Du Mont Cathedral after which our hero is named. The Luxembourg Gardens are just starting to thaw from the rough winters, and the fountains are filled with muddy water waiting for spring cleaning. There are soft pink and white blooms everywhere. The Seine laps at the banks and as you walk the turquoise sort of seeps into everything around.

Paris is an entity on its own, but when I read Anna on the fourth day of our trip, it seemed to come further alive. It became less a tourist destination and more of a city that was a home. It was lived in. It was real. Once we were back in London, it wouldn’t be just a memory in my travel diary or scrapbook, it would remain alive. It’s really an interesting thing that happens psychologically. Even within the pages of the book, when you read it it doesn’t seem like a mystery. You can follow Anna as she walks through Paris and understand the book better.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of YA romance. But I’d also recommend that you wait to read it before you travel to Paris. It’s a much richer, fuller and vivid experience.

UPDATE : Read about my Parisian adventure here