This was exactly the guilty pleasure YA pool read I needed this summer! 
 Laying in the sun at 29 degrees Celsius turning a new page every second, I finished the book practically in a day. 
 I was severely disappointed in all the YA books I've read the past years. Fangirl, E&P, Mortal Instruments.. they just did not do anything for me. The only remarkable book was we were liars. 
 I knew by reading the blurb that I'd love it. It sounded so typically YA like I used tor read in my youth and I longed for a bit of nostalgia. 
 Anna was a great protagonist. She wasn't dumbed down and I really loved her aspirations. Honestly, this book gets an extra star for an aspiring female film critic protagonist. How cool is that. It was so different from the aspirations that most girls in YA books have so I thought it was refreshing. 
 Cinema is very important to my life too and so I could identify with Anna in that aspect. She seeked solace in cinemas and she couldn't be happier when she found out there were at least a thousand in Paris. 
 Also pluspoints for mentioning Sofia Coppola and one of my all time favourite movies Lost in Translation. She acknowledged the problem of the lack of female directors nominated for the Academy Awards too. That was a cool touch. 
 The book starts out with a few typical rich white girl problems. Oh no, my rich daddy is sending me a boarding school in Paris. Poor me! 
 Who knew she'd end up just loooving it there, right?! I did. 
 But the side characters add dimension to the story. Rashmi, Meredith, St. Clair (!), Josh, Bridgette, Toph (the jerk), Dave & Mike (the even bigger jerks). 
 It's not just a book about love and swooning, although it's a big part of the book. It's a book about friendship, forgiveness, a hint of how to handle mean girls - a book by Anna Oliphant & domestic problems, and even cancer plays a significant role. 
 One minus was that the book felt like it was written in the early 2000s. Why is there no Facebook, or text? Why do Anna and her home front communicate via email. Surely a 17 year old girl would be obsessed with her smartphone in this day & age. Much less send snail mail to her best friend to apologize. Of course Instagram and Facebook needn't dominate the narrative , but a little hint towards its existence wouldn't hurt either to add some realism. I understand it is way easier to have characters communicate via e mail, so the conversations aren't ridiculously long and useless like they tend to be on social media, but still.. 
 Regardless, I looved this book!