'Isla and the Happily Ever After' by Stephanie Perkins

From the BLURB:

From the glittering streets of Manhattan to the moonlit rooftops of Paris, falling in love is easy for hopeless dreamer Isla and introspective artist Josh. But as they begin their senior year in France, Isla and Josh are quickly forced to confront the heartbreaking reality that happily-ever-afters aren’t always forever.

Their romantic journey is skillfully intertwined with those of beloved couples Anna and Étienne and Lola and Cricket, whose paths are destined to collide in a sweeping finale certain to please fans old and new.

Isla has been in love with Josh Wasserstein for most of her high school life – though it takes a trip to the dentist and heavy medication for her to get up the nerve to have an actual conversation with him.

That conversation takes place at Kismet, a café around the corner from their respective New York apartments – and the fate aspect of that is not lost on Isla. You see, she and Josh actually attend the America School in Paris, so she has plenty of opportunities throughout the year to talk with him (and, actually he once commented on their mutual love of Joann Sfar – so there was that, their most significant exchange … until now). While still slightly high on dentist meds, Isla strikes up a conversation with Josh when she spies him at her favourite café drawing in his ever-present sketchbook, and because it’s Josh (!) and she’s feeling brave she can’t help but flirt with him … and be mortified the following morning when she remembers snapshots of their exchange.

Her best friend, Kurt, assures Isla it couldn’t have been so bad. But she’s not so sure Kurt really understands – partly because he’s on the autism spectrum and has a hard time reading people’s emotions – and partly because he’s borne witness to all the insignificant exchanges between her and Josh over the years (as Kurt also attends the America School) but he wasn’t there to properly catalogue the Kismet event.

Sure enough, when School’s back for the year Isla feels her connection to Josh has strengthened (and that fate is still playing a part, when she finds herself assigned to Josh’s old room from last year).

Something is happening between her and her crush-from-afar, Josh Wasserstein – they have a connection, and as they both start building on their Kismet encounter, the more she’s convinced that Josh can feel it too.

‘Isla and the Happily Ever After’ is the third and final book in Stephanie Perkins’s romance YA series that started with ‘Anna and the French Kiss’, continued with ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ and will finally end with Isla and Josh’s story.

I was really nervous to read this book. ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ came out in 2011, a year after ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ … but ‘Isla’, although announced as the third and final book around the same time that ‘Lola’ came out, took three years to get here. Stephanie Perkins has been very open and honest about how hard this book was to write and explained the hold-up (which sounded like a combination of all the worst things that can happen to an author – writers block, lack of confidence and sheer exhaustion). Perkins also teased fans that this book would not be all smooth sailing for Isla … and that warning, coupled with the knowledge that this was her hardest book to write, was a little nerve-racking as a reader and fan. I didn’t know how Perkin’s creative struggle would translate to the finale of one of my favourite contemporary YA series…. But I can say, with hand over my heart, that Stephanie Perkins has done it. She has given fans the most wonderful of endings to this series.

It took me a while to get into this book, however. Probably down to a few niggling reader-worries going in, but I found myself starting to read ‘Isla’ and then putting it down … picking it up for a few pages, and then putting it down. I wasn’t getting hooked, initially, but once the story took us back to Paris (and the original setting of ‘Anna and the French Kiss’) I stayed glued to that page.

So, the book begins with Isla having her ‘Kismet’ moment with Josh (while high on meds, admittedly) – fans will recognise Isla as the few years younger pupil at the America School who Anna figured out was crushing on Josh, one of the boys in her group of friends. For the reason that Isla stretches back to the first book, it’s easy to fall into sympathy with her one-sided crush on the beautiful Josh Wasserstein (son of a senator, artist- extraordinaire and bad-boy of the America School who is always on his third and final warning);  

The next few days are unsettling. 

Josh is aware of me. 

Whenever he enters a room, an unmistakable mass of chaotic energy enters with him. It rattles the air between us. It buzzes and hums. And every time we surrender – every time our eyes meet in a flash of nerve – a shock wave jolts throughout my entire system. I feel frayed. Excited. Unravelled.
 

I both really loved the melodrama of ‘Isla’, and sometimes it bugged me (but only slightly). Look, a lot of the appeal of YA lies in the fact that it’s all about firsts – and the heightened emotions surrounding them. But so much of ‘Isla’ is about falling hard and fast – I mean, it’s like a piano falling on both Josh and Isla’s heads. And I loved that, I really did – but at one point Josh shows Isla a panel from his graphic novel memoir and he’s included a drawing of the two of them, and the thought-bubble ‘salvation!’ above his head. Moments like that made me chuckle, and I don’t think that was the intended reaction.

But I did love Josh and Isla. They feel like a couple straight out of a Cameron Crowe movie (I’m looking at you, Lloyd Dobbler!) they’re this perfect combination of sweet and heat – and, speaking of, Stephanie Perkins writes a seriously good sex scene that’s commendable for being about female satisfaction, without venturing into inappropriate smut. It was refreshing to read something so frank in contemporary YA.

My confession leaves him stunned. 

“There’s no story,” I say. “I saw you one day, and I just knew.”Josh stares at me. He looks inside of me. And then he kisses me with more passion than he’s ever kissed me with before.

I also really liked Isla's friendship with Kurt - who is on the autism spectrum (what was once called Asperger syndrome), though I did think they had a lot of problems with their friendship towards the end of the book that I don't feel were given proper page time. The Kurt/Isla friendship also had echoes of Sibylla and Michael's friendship (perhaps minus romantic undertones) from Fiona Wood's marvellous 'Wildlife', but I think Wood handled that friendship better than Perkins did in the end.

While I was worried that Stephanie Perkins’ struggles with writing this book would show through in the final product, I was actually surprised at how it helped shape Isla’s story. Anna and Lola’s romantic struggles were a mix of physical and emotional struggles – Anna had Etienne’s girlfriend to contend with, Lola had her current boyfriend at the time, and a long history with the Bell’s as her roadblocks. A lot of Isla’s struggles in coming together with Josh are internal, they’re her own hang-ups that she needs to conquer (though she tries to make out physical obstacles as her excuse, readers know better). I feel like that’s a reflection of what sounded like Perkins’ internal struggles to write this book (like her lacking self-confidence). Then there’s the moment when Isla offers some harsh editing critiques of Josh’s very personal graphic memoir – I feel like that was a little author moment creeping in, commenting on how hard (but necessary) it is to hear those criticisms. I really liked that Isla’s hang-ups were about her confidence, and overcoming something in herself – that was so interesting and relatable to me.

I also loved that we’re back in Europe with this book. I liked the San Francisco setting in ‘Lola’, but a lot of the fun in ‘Anna’ came from the Paris setting. This time we’re back at the America School in Paris, but there’s also a jaunt to Barcelona that I absolutely adored because I’VE BEEN THERE! and it’s one of my favourite cities in the world. I particularly liked the description of Antoni Gaudí’s Catalan modernist architecture (which is like something out of a dream) and cathedral Sagrada Família:

It’s a monster. 

It wants me to cower. It wants me to weep. It wants me to save my soul from hell. Gaudí started work on this church in the late nineteenth century, but it won’t be finished for at least another decade. It stretches twice as high as the tallest cathedrals of France. It looks like a fantasyland castle – wet sand dripped through fingers, both sharp and soft. Bright construction lights are everywhere, and workers are tinkering around its massive spires in dangerously tall cranes.

  

‘Isla and the Happily Ever After’ is the finale fans were hoping for. Isla and Josh are the perfect way to finish this series, and fans will absolutely squeal in delight when we get to catch up with Lola and Cricket, but especially Anna and Etienne.

4.5/5

'Lola and the Boy Next Door' by Stephanie Perkins

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn't believe in fashion . . . she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit-more sparkly, more fun, more wild-the better. But even though Lola's style is outrageous, she's a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighbourhood.

When Cricket-a gifted inventor-steps out from his twin sister's shadow and back into Lola's life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.

Lola’s life is excellent. She has a kick-ass idea for her winter formal, her (older) boyfriend, Max, is a step up the social ladder and the house next door is still up for rent.

So what if her Marie Antoinette dress has some pannier-problems? Or that her dad’s are less than impressed with her tattooed, twenty-two-year-old boyfriend? Or that the Bell twins have actually moved home and the boy-next-door who broke her heart two years ago with them?

‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ is the sort-of-sequel to Stephanie Perkin’s smash hit contemporary YA romance, ‘Anna and the French Kiss.’

I love, love, loved ‘Anna’ when I read it last year. I have been a big fan of adult contemporary romances for a long time, but ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ was one of the first YA contemporaries I enjoyed as much (if not more) than books in its adult counterpart genre. So I was thrilled to learn that Ms Perkins intended to get on a role with her books and release two more Anna ‘companion’ novels. ‘Lola’ is the second, with ‘Isla and the Happily Ever After’ to come in the fall of 2012.

I think everything I loved about ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ has been revisited (but not rehashed) in ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’.


First off; setting. ‘Anna’ took place in Paris, and was a beautiful ode to the city of love. Admittedly, Ms Perkins had a tough task ahead of her coming up with an equally charming setting for her second book. But she accomplishes it with San Francisco. That’s right, the American city famous for the Golden Gate Bridge, gay pride, Alcatraz, fog and being the setting of ‘Full House’ (*sigh*, uncle Jesse). I love that Perkins set her story here, because the city had repercussions throughout the plot. First of all, Lola has two gay dads. Andy and Nathan adopted Lola from Nathan’s run-away, addicted sister Norah. It sounds very soap-operaish, but for Lola it’s completely normal. Norah was unstable and had Lola when she was just a teenager. Andy and Nathan had been in a stable and committed relationship for a long time, and wanted a baby – Lola needed them and vice versa. It may sound strange on the outside, but Perkins wonderfully illustrates the normal of Lola’s family. Her dads are both protective and loving (and neither of them is ‘the wife’, thank you very much) and even though Norah pops up to cause problems once in a while, Lola knows who her real parents are. I loved the family dynamic. It was missing from ‘Anna’, because of a boarding school plot and Etienne’s imperfect home life, so it was a nice switch-up to have ‘Lola’ be so family focused. And it’s a wonderful family. Nathan and Andy were both stand-outs for me. I would have liked more conflict and page-time with Lola’s birth mum, Norah, but I understand that theirs isn’t the sort of easily-summarised relationship that can be addressed in a primarily romance-focused book.

I’m lucky to live in a place that doesn’t have to hide what it is. Businesses like the Sausage Factory (restaurant), Spunk (hair salon), and Hand Job (manicures) are clear about the residents, but there’s a genuine sense of love and community. It’s a family. And like a family, everyone knows everyone’s business, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I like that the guys at Spike’s Coffee wave as I pass by. I like that the guys at Jeffrey’s know Betsy needs the large container of fresh Lamb, Yams and Vegies.

Secondly, the San-Fran scenery gave Lola the perfect romantic setting. Lola fell in love with the boy-next-door, Cricket Bell, when he stepped out in pinstripe pants two years ago. They don’t just live next door to each other, they have same-facing windows that are perilously close thanks to San Francisco architecture. I loved that Perkins used this little city-quirk to write some very sweet scenes between Cricket and Lola. Everything from broom handles to late night moon-talking makes for some very ‘awwww’ moments, all thanks to the city setting.


Something that carries over from ‘Anna’ into ‘Lola’ is the love triangle. When the book begins Lola is happy with her punk-rock (older) boyfriend, Max. That is, until Cricket Bell returns and gets her heart racing all over again. I really liked the romantic conflict that on the one hand; Lola loves the ‘cool’ factor that comes with dating the older, rugged Max. Cricket is very much the ‘Beta’ hero when compared to the tattooed rocker. But it forces Lola to step back and look at who she loves being with, but who she can’t live without.

Finally, I loved Lola. She’s amazing. She doesn’t just dress – she dresses to impress. She’s all about costumes and extravagance and I could totally picture her as a contestant on an upcoming season of ‘Project Runway’. Argh! I loved her. She’s creative and fearless, a little aimless in love but entirely lovable.


And don’t even get me started on Cricket . . . he’s a goofy gentleman with an interesting family history and thoroughly nerdy underbelly. He’s a very different YA hero – certainly not your typical bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks (hello Max!) who seems prevalent in much YA romance fiction. Cricket is instead, genuine. The nice boy all good girls should fall for – the one who normally finishes last. I adored him and want more like him in my romance books!

I did love ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’, but I didn’t really love the ‘companion novel’ tag. I don’t necessarily understand why ‘Lola’ had to be associated with ‘Anna’ at all? I would understand if ‘Lola’ was also set at the School of America in Paris. I would understand the ‘companion’ tag if ‘Lola’ was actually about one of the characters we first met in ‘Anna’; John, Meredith or Rashmi perhaps? Instead, the only tenuous connection that ‘Lola’ has to ‘Anna’ is the appearance of Anna and Etienne as co-workers at Lola’s local cinemaplex. And I did get the feeling that Anna and Etienne weren’t essential to the novel or Lola’s world – really, the helpful and lovey-dovey co-workers could have been entirely new secondary characters. If they worked at all it was as a certainty of love – Lola may just assume that Anna and Etienne are in the ‘puppy love’ stage of their relationship, but returning readers know the hurdles they went through to be together. Otherwise I really could have done without Anna again . . . not because I don’t love her, but because I think Lola was strong enough on her own.

Stephanie Perkins has done it again. She has confirmed that she’s deserving of the crown ‘Reigning Queen of Romantic YA’. ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ is another beautiful page-turner set in the gorgeous San-Fran with a quirky heroine and a gentlemanly hero. Divine!

4.5/5

'Anna and the French Kiss' by Stephanie PERKINS

Received from the publisher

From the BLURB:

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?

‘Anna and the French Kiss’ is the debut YA novel from Stephanie Perkins.

Anna’s senior year is not going as planned. Instead of living it up in her home town of Atlanta, Georgia and crushing on her cinemaplex fantasy boyfriend, Anna is being shipped to a French boarding school. Really, it’s like something out of a Charlotte Bronte novel. Anna’s father has hit the big-time with his schmaltzy romance-depression novels, and he insists on giving Anna some cultural learning. So Anna is going to the School of America in Paris. Paris – where the French are renowned for hating Americans, white sneakers and fast food. What is a little Georgia-peach like Anna supposed to do?

Anna’s homesickness is eased when she is befriended by the football-loving Meredith – who then introduces her to Josh and Rashmi. . . and Étienne St. Clair. Étienne is the boarding school’s resident heartthrob – every girl wants to date him, and every boy wants to hate him. And it doesn’t take long until Anna joins the St. Clair fanclub. But he has a girlfriend. Plus he’s British – well, British/American/French. . . still, far too refined for little ol’ Anna. But what does it mean when St. Clair starts spending all his free time with Anna. What does it mean when she starts calling him Étienne and a drunken revelation could change everything. . .?

I started reading this book at 8PM one night, and found myself inhaling the last page at midnight. I literally could not pry the book from my hands, it was so darn good! And it’s definitely going on my 2010 favourite’s list!

Perkin’s debut is very much a contemporary teen romance, with all the trimmings. It’s boy meets girl, except with a Paris setting and heightened teen melodrama when homesickness and distance factor into the emotional equation.

Anna is a fantastic protagonist. I loved the fact that she was a shy, clean-freak (mostly because I could relate!). Anna gets to Paris and can only think about how homesick she is, and self-conscious at being a ‘crass’ American. I think she had a very relatable and understandable reaction to her boarding school experience. Of course Perkins could have gone to the other end of the spectrum and written about Anna cutting loose and going crazy on her freedom (and the French drinking age of 16!). But I really related to Anna’s shyness, and it was interesting to read her intimidation of Paris. Anna has a really big hang-up at not being able to speak the language, and this made for interesting reading and insight into the life of an international student. Little things become big anxieties – like going to the cinema and asking for movie ticket! I loved the ‘Lost in Translation’ examination. It also made for some pretty hilarious moments in the novel;

The only French word I know is oui, which means ‘yes,’ and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-u-i and not w-e-e.

Anna was really terrific – a perfect teen bundle of neuroses and bravery. Because she was so scared of her Paris experience, it made her small triumphs that much more epic!

And then there’s Étienne St. Clair. . . *dreamy sigh*. Ahhh. . . never has there been a more swoon-worthy fictional teen pin-up. Étienne is the whole package – he has the accent (British!) he’s got a crooked smile, effortlessly mussed hair, a killer sense of humour and a romantic-steak a mile wide. I loved him! I especially loved that his complications weren’t always easy to decipher. . . it’s up to Anna (and readers) to interpret his actions, from drunken ramblings to ‘is he touching Anna’s leg on purpose in the darkened movie theatre’? I loved the melodrama and emotional roller-coaster that Étienne and Anna go on – because I was invested in these two from the get-go.

‘Anna and the French Kiss’ is unabashedly romantic. I loved the tension, the will-they-or-won’t-they guess-work was fantastic. . . and Étienne + Anna were too freakin cute!

We have a perfect view of the entrance – hundreds and hundreds of tiny figures carved into three colossal archways. The statues look like stone dolls, each one separated and individualized. “They’re incredible,” I whisper.

“Not there. Here.” He points to my feet.

I look down, and I’m surprised to find myself standing in the middle of a small stone circle. In the centre, directly between my feet, is a coppery-bronze octagon with a star. Words are engraved in the stone around it: POINT ZÉRO DES ROUTES DE FRANCE.

“Mademoiselle Oliphant. It translates to ‘Point zero of the roads of France.’ In other words, it’s the point from which all other distances in France are measured.” St. Clair clears his throat. “It’s the beginning of everything.”

I look back up. He’s smiling.

“Welcome to Paris, Anna. I’m glad you’ve come.”

One thing I really loved about this book was the examination of family. It’s not an all-consuming focus of the novel, but Perkins at least touches on familial issues. So often in contemporary YA books parents are convenient no-shows, swept under the rug for storyline’s sake without a believable reason for their absence. That’s not the case in ‘Anna and the French Kiss’, though it easily could have been. Shipping her protagonist off to a boarding school could have given Perkins a legitimate excuse to skip over discussions of family. . . but instead she writes about these teenagers feelings of abandonment and displacement that comes with their family sending them away. It’s a big deal for Étienne especially, who has never been close to his father. And for Anna, whose father changed when he gained success. . . and I've got to say, Anna’s father (hilariously!) reminded me of a certain American pulp-writer of schmaltzy love stories. . . *cough* Nicholas Sparks! *cough*.

There are two more books planned as companions to Anna’s novel. ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ is set for a Fall 2011 release, while ‘Isla and the Happily Ever After’ is slated for Fall 2012. Isla has a cameo appearance in ‘Anna and the French Kiss’, but I’m not so sure I know who Lola is. . . regardless, I did think at the end of ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ that the story could go on (and I would like little glimpses into Anna and Étienne’s ongoing romance! *squee!*). So I was thrilled to learn of these ‘companion’ sequels!

‘Anna and the French Kiss’ is the literary equivalent of a chocolate éclair. Chocolatey, creamy goodness you can gorge yourself on and then come back for seconds. . . in other words – delicious!

5/5