My Review: Anna And The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Anna and the French Kiss

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Goodreads summary:

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris—until she meets Étienne St. Claire: perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible. The only problem is that he's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her almost-relationship back home.

As winter melts into spring, will a year of romantic near-misses end with the French kiss Anna—and readers—have long awaited?

My Review:

I have absolutely no idea why it took me so long to read this book! I'd heard about it everywhere (Goodreads, Twitter, blogs), my friends had recommended it, and yet, it hadn't made it's way to my TBR pile. Until this past Monday. And had I not had to work this week, it would've been finished later that same night (and I think staying up to 2am the past 3 nights to read, probably took a toll on my abilities to function at work).

Friday Fives: Five Twitter Peeps Everyone Should Follow

Keeping it short and sweet today!

 

What are the FIVE Twitter handles/people you think everyone should follow?

 

1. Me - @elschneid: How could I not throw myself out there? Aside from all my writerly fan-tab-u-lous tweets, I share inside friends and family discounts from my apparel days (who doesn't want 30% off twice / year to BR, Gap, Piperlime and Old Navy, eh? - yeah, that got your attention, didn't it?). :)

Friday Fives: What Are Your Five Best Summer Reads?

PaperHangover's Friday Fives blog topic for this week?

Best Summer Reads.

My list is a combo of some I've read (some of them, over and over and over again!), as well as a few I plan on reading soon.

What are yours? Ohhhh, I hope to find some new good books!

1. DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth

My vote for best read in 2011 (so far!) - read it in 2 days and I'm currently reading it again right now! See my review for more details.

YA Critique Group Anyone?

Well hello fellow YAwesome writers!

 

I'm part of an a-mazing on-line writers group, The Write-Brained Network, or the WB for short. And within that group, I head up the Young Adult writers subgroup, YAwesome Writers. 

 

So far the YA group is kicking butt and taking names (there are 31 members so far!), but I've done very little over the past few months, in regards to setting up activities for everyone. 

 

With that being said, and based on how popular our group is, not to mention that of the YA genre (and not just for all of us that write it, but read it as well) I'd love to open the door to all of my fellow YAwesome writers, and see if anyone out there would be interested in forming a critique group?

 

I know many of you are already a part of other critique groups / beta readers, so who knows what kind of response I'll receive? But...I'd love to see if there is any interest!

Exactly Why I Love YA!

I just found this great YouTube video over on Kara Lucas's blog.

I can honestly say, I so miss high school - and I'd go back in a heartbeat, if I could...and these kids are the exact reason why. Man, I love everything about the genre I write in and I guess in the end, I'm still an eighteen-year-old at heart.

Big cheers to the 2011 Senior class down at Clovis High School in Clovis, California for putting this together! And congratulations on graduation!

Friday Fives: What Are Five Excuses You're Ready to Give Up?

Yet another amazing topic to discuss today, from the great writerly peeps over at Paper Hangover:

What are FIVE excuses you have to be ready to give up in order to be a better writer?

This one was a tough one for me - hence my long-winded answers below. But sometimes it takes writing things out, to attack them face on. Grip them by the horns and slam them to the ground. And when you read my #5, you'll know why I took on this challenge of facing some of my excuses.

1. Maybe I'll never be good enough. Yikes, nothing like a biggun, right off the bat, right? But here's the deal: while I know this mostly isn't true, otherwise I wouldn't have spent 30+ years writing, there are those days when I absolutely, unequivocally, feel this way. What writer doesn't struggle with this internal conflict (aside from many others)? But like many things I do in life, I take on writing as a challenge. The more I work at it, the better it will become. But I have to work hard. Because the craft of writing only gets better as you go. And the amount of things I'm still learning, never ceases to amaze me. So while I'll have "those days" - I know I've had more that told me I will be good enough. Which means in the end, I like my odds.