Anna and the French Kiss

By Stephanie Perkins

Young Adult fiction

Available now in hardcover

My favorite kind of book is funny and a little sad with good character development and a nice romance. Anna and the French Kiss is exactly that.

It's about a girl, Anna, whose famous author father has decided to send her to boarding school in Paris for her senior year. She doesn't want to leave her best friend Bridgette or her almost-boyfriend Toph, but she doesn't have a choice. When she gets to Paris she meets a new group of friends--including Etienne St. Clair, who is gorgeous, amazing, and taken.

I think I can sum up my feelings about this book with the following bulleted list:

• I read it in one day, and on that day I also worked an 11-hour shift
• I can't stop thinking about it
• It's awesome
• I laughed out loud and read the following passage four times.

"In the history of terrible holidays, this ranks as the worst ever. Worse than the Fourth of July when Granddad showed up to see the fireworks in a kilt and insisted on singing 'Flower of Scotland' instead of 'America the Beautiful.' Worse than the Halloween when Trudy Sherman and I both went to school dressed as Glinda the Good Witch, and she told everyone her costume was better than mine, because you could see my purple 'Monday' panties through my dress AND YOU TOTALLY COULD."

review of Mr. Chartwell

Mr. Chartwell
by Rebecca Hunt
Adult fiction
Pub date February 22, 2011

First of all, I have to say that the cover of this book is the best I've seen of the 2011 titles. I love it so much that I asked our Random House rep to procure me a poster to hang in the store and then my apartment.

Mr. Chartwell is the "bete noir" that Winston Churchill sometimes referenced when speaking of his depression. Named after Churchill's estate, Mr. Chartwell shows up at Esther Hammerhans's front door one day to inquire about renting a room. She lets him in and her relationship with the black dog begins.

This book is charmingly odd from beginning to end, as are most books in which the main character is a large talking dog. The dialogue between Mr. Chartwell and the other characters is brilliant. It is half spoken and half conducted via the strange, familiar, and often disgusting behavior of a misbehaving dog. I found myself liking every character in this book, even ones I didn't necessarily want to like. They're so real that you can't judge them too harshly for their faults.

All the quaint and comfortable parts of life are drawn in perfect detail in this book. Rebecca Hunt is the kind of author that the lovechild of Nick Hornby and Maggie O'Farrell might be.



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Review of Red Glove

Red Glove
by Holly Black
Young Adult (Paranormal?) Fiction
Pub date April 2011

I love this series. Love love love it. White Cat was one of those books that I never would have read if certain circumstances had not combined to drop it into my lap, and I'm so glad I read it. Red Glove was even better.

I know that some of you haven't read White Cat yet, so I won't give much of a synopsis because I don't want to spoil the first book. Instead I'll tell you what I love about the series.

First of all, Holly Black's world-building is masterful. In the world of these novels, some people are born with the ability to work curses: luck curses, death curses, memory, emotion, etcetera. Cassel Sharpe comes from a family of curse workers who have chosen to use their powers to work for the mob. At the same time, curse workers' rights are a prominent political issue.

I hate slogging through long paragraphs describing the history of some minor detail that differs from the real world. Instead, Black works crucial details into the narrative so smoothly that they feel natural and obvious. She doesn't use cliches, and when a character says something that sounds too cliched another character is always quick to point it out. The characters are so believable that I expected to see them on the street when I was between chapters.

And, of course, there's a cliffhanger ending that left me jonesing for the next book, Black Heart. Write faster, Holly Black!