Book Review: Kisses and Croissants by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau

Rating: ★★★✦☆

e-ARC

Spoiler-Free Review

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This book follows a sixteen-year-old ballerina, Mia, who spends her summer in Paris for a six-week ballet program. However, as things tend to go in the City of Love, she meets a French boy named Louis, and they hit it off immediately. Throughout the story, we watch as she balances her different worlds and learns to fully embrace her values and passions.

Before starting this book, I saw it compared to popular YA romances like “Love and Gelato,” “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” and “Anna and the French Kiss,” so as you can assume, I had rather high expectations going in.

To be honest, I didn’t like the book at first. I found Mia a bit one-dimensional and the narration felt a bit cheesy. It was also just very predictable and the sentences seemed kind of… mechanical. After a while, though, I was able to get into the flow of the book and soon, I found myself flipping through the pages really quickly, entranced by the story. Mia’s one-dimensionality became her character and confidence, and as it turns out, there were more plot twists than I’d bargained for. The sentences did remain somewhat explanatory throughout the book but they did the job, and as for the cheesiness… it’s a romance novel set in Paris–how can it not be cheesy?

Another aspect I liked about this book was its inclusion of French culture, whether that was in the descriptions of Paris’ streets or the French phrases weaved into the dialogue. Also, I was really surprised that I didn’t feel bored by the ballet scenes. I know next to nothing about ballet, but the scenes were always really well-balanced, just detailed enough for me to understand the ballet storyline while still remaining vague enough so that I didn’t feel overwhelmed by all of the technical ballet terms.

I also think the characters were developed well and I loved the growth in the relationships (both the platonic and romantic ones 😊). There weren’t really any characters I disliked by the time I finished the book, and I found that charming.

All in all, this book was simple yet thoughtful, meaningful. It helped me with my reading slump, and it’s definitely one I’d recommend to anyone looking for a cute, quick read!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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