Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

To start this review off, let me just say that I had VERY high hopes for this book, and for a certain male character. My friends on twitter were very insistent that I read it, and proclaimed that I would just LOVE this male character! "Wow, what a winner HE must be," I thought.
Please beware that this review contains spoilers.

Okay. So first of all, this book is about a girl named Anna Oliphant who is ripped from her life in Georgia to go to school in Paris because her dad wants to impress his author buddies. Although I would LOVE to go to school in Paris, I can totally sympathize about not being given a choice. (Hello, resentment at being homeschooled! I see you're still there.)
She leaves behind her best friend Bridgette and almost-kinda-sorta-boyfriend Toph, and she's not exactly happy about it. She also leaves behind her mom and little brother, Sean, which she is slightly more upset about.
Enter Meredith, Rashmi, Josh, and finally, Étienne St. Clair.
They're all very friendly and welcoming, and Anna soon finds herself falling for the swoon-worthy Étienne St. Clair. (I will keep saying his full name because yeah. I can.) He, of course, is totally falling for her too, and we can hear wedding bells playing softly. The only problem?
He has a girlfriend.
Étienne. St. Clair. Has. A. Girlfriend.
She's actually a very nice girl, as evidenced by the fact that she's very friendly when she meets Anna for the first time. She was also Rashmi's best friend.
Now, Étienne St. Clair is very respectful about the boundaries set up by Anna and Toph's "relationship." Sorta. So it would stand to reason that Anna should be very respectful of Étienne and Ellie's relationship, too, right? 
Wrong!
It took me a week to figure out exactly what made me feel icky about this situation. It was partially the fact that Étienne was clearly falling for Anna, yet he wasn't being fair to her or Ellie. When he started having feelings for Anna, he should have either stayed a little farther away from her, or broken it off with Ellie. He did neither. And this is before his excuse. (I'll get to that later.)
The other part that made me feel icky was the part where Anna found herself resenting Ellie, even going so far as to think of her as "slutty" and fantasize about bad things happening to her. Ellie might have distanced herself from her friends at the School of America in Paris, but she certainly did not do anything to deserve Anna's wrath. 
That, combined with the fact that Anna got completely, totally, irrationally angry at Bridgette after she found out that Bridgette and Toph started dating while Anna was gone (harsh, but Anna and Toph weren't really dating. Bridge totally should've told Anna, but Anna overreacted) and how Meredith (who also totally loves Étienne) got jealous and clingy every time Anna and Étienne hung out managed to make me totally and completely sad because of how easily Anna allowed her feelings for Étienne to come between almost every potentially positive friendship she could have with another girl. 
Does this mean I hated Étienne St. Clair? No, it does not, and I'll tell you why. 
Although he made consistently questionable choices concerning his romantic life, he 1.) helped Anna feel at home in a land that was not her own, 2.) was a good friend to her when she needed him, and 3.) was also coping with a lot of family stuff during this book. As in, his mother had cancer and his father was a sadistic, controlling, COLOSSAL jerk. I'm not saying that this completely erased his mistakes, I'm just saying that he was very confused. When people are confused, they do stupid things. Like cheating on their girlfriends. This doesn't mean that what he did was okie-dokie, it just means that he used it as an excuse to convince himself that what he was doing was not that bad. All in all, he was a good person, but he made REALLY, INCREDIBLY STUPID CHOICES. 
I also, for that matter, don't hate Anna. She had several redeeming qualities, such as being willing to stand up for a friend who's being bullied. She's hilarious, and she also is really passionate about film and I LOVE that. Okay, I'm done talking about Anna and the French Kiss now. Go read it, tell me what you thought!I love a good book debate.