Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

It took me a while to work my way up to reading this book, even with all the buzz it was getting. It's one of those books, with the title and cover and synopsis alone, I would have overlooked. But everyone who read it literally raved and raved about it, including John Green. So we picked it as one of our book club picks, and I picked it up from B&N.

It's about a girl who moves to Paris, the city of love, and ends up crushing on a guy who has a girlfriend. Ah, the angst. (That's seriously the most underplayed, restrained, sucky summary you will ever read. But really, there isn't that much to summarize. Perhaps this is a better one: This is a book you will love if you have even an inch of heart under your ribcage.)

Because, wow wow wow. These characters are the realest kind of real you will ever read. I'm fully a character-driven reader, and the characters in this one drove me way farther than France. I wanted to shrink the book and inject it into my veins or something. I literally couldn't read fast enough or slow enough. I had to keep reading - I didn't sleep much once I started - but I also wanted to savor every word and phrase and laugh. And there were a lot of laughs. But there was also a lot of heart-seizing. I literally smiled the entire book, I think, even keeping the ghost of one at the sad parts.

It's just one of those books that makes you happy - to be alive, to be a human, to be reading a freaking amazing book. And also makes you want to move to France. It's about people being people, and the happiness and sadness and confusion that comes with that. It's about lights and movies and food and stars. As absolutely amazing as the book is, it makes you want to set it down and walk outside and experience the same thing. It also makes you want to curl up on your bed and read it again. And again.

I can't even adequately discuss this one, and neither could our book club, because this is pretty much how our convo went : I loved it. Yeah, me too. And that one part? Yeah, so good. Yeah.

And usually, I don't bug my family and friends to read books. I recommend books I think they'll like, and go from there. I've gotten a lot of family and friends to read that way. I mean, I'm not usually the kind of "bookseller" who wears creepy trench coats and says "Hey, kid, need a book?" in that scoundrel-y way knock-off purse sellers do. But with this book, I pushed. I stopped reading and read out loud several parts, called my friends and forced them to read it (and they, in turn, when finished, called me and raved about it.) Because I wanted to buy a million copies and leave them on people's doorsteps. Because it's just the kind of book that makes Earth a place you want to live on.

It's just...charming. Absolutely, crazily charming.

And I am ridiculously, ridiculously excited to read Lola and the Boy Next Door, the companion novel coming out later this year. Because Stephanie Perkins really, really knows how to write.