Stephanie Perkins Books In Order

Publication Order of Anna and the French Kiss Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

“Just because something isn’t practical doesn’t mean it’s not worth creating. Sometimes beauty and real-life magic are enough.” -Stephanie Perkins

Stephanie Perkins, an American author who is well known for her famous fictions: Anna and the French Kiss released in the 2010, as well as “Lola and the Boy Next Door” which was released in 2011. Her another book “Isla and the Happily Ever After” was released in 2014, which went on to become a New York Times list of bestseller in young adult genre. With that she became an immensely popular internationally bestselling author of books meant for teenagers and for adults with the hearts of a teenager. Apart from these famous books, she worked for some anthologies like “My True Love… Stories” in 2014 and “Summer Days… Stories” in 2016. She collaborated with Holly Black and helped her in compilation of the stories. Stephanie Perkins won the Listen Up Award in 2012 for” Lola.. “. Also, she won the YALSA’s (young adult) Best fiction in 2012 again for the same book. “Isla which was released in 2014 also ended on Amazon’s top teen and young adult book lists.

Stephanie Perkins is known for her love for books and is called a bibliophile who has always been around books, working around books, first as a bookseller, then as a librarian and currently as a famous novelist and editor. She was born on November 24, 1981 in South Carolina and brought up in Arizona. Perkins got educated both in San Francisco and Atlanta. She studied in the universities of California and Georgia and it was in her teenage years only when she started writing. She studied her works while she was schooling. Since 2004, she has settled in North Carolina, living the mountains of Asheville with Jarrod Perkins, her spouse who she considers as her best friend. They have a beautiful house, with every room of it painted in a different colour of the rainbow and they have a feisty cat they share their home with, named Mr Tumnus. She is quite often invited to provide motivational lectures to teens in schools and colleges for her extraordinary understanding of teenage nature, emotions and feelings.

Her first novel, “Anna and….” which she released in 2010 got placed in NPR’s Best Teen Reads list which is brought about on yearly basis. The story starts with the lead female character Anna, who lives in Atlanta, where she is eagerly waiting for her senior year. She has a good job in Atlanta along with a loyal best friend. Besides, she has a crush on her coworker in the movie theater, which is on the edge of getting flamed up into something more. All the thrill gets shattered when she is unexpectedly shipped off to a boarding school in Paris by her father. There in the city of lights, she meets cool people despite not being able to speak a word of French. There she comes across Etienne St Clair, a guy who appears quite perfect and appealing but he was already taken and so would be Anna if anything came of her crush back home. The story gets complicated with complex emotions and suspended real life like characters. “Anna….” achieved a lot of great reviews from the readers and it is considered as one of the greatest young adult contemporaries, with many elements like humor, romance, drama etc. Critics applauded the author for her lifelike description of the characters as they don’t seem to be the characters of a novel, but people around us.

In Perkins’ next novel, “Lola….”, which was published on July 9, 2013, the protagonist is a girl named Lola Nolan, who is a to-be costume designer and she believes that the more sparkling, outrageous and fun the costume looks, the better it is. She has a hot rocker boyfriend and a great family which makes her believe in the fact that she has a pretty perfect life. This belief remains intact until she meets the Bells, Cricket and Calliope, return to her neighbourhood and start living next door. Cricket was a gifted inventor, who was also Lola’s childhood friend. Calliope is his twin sister, and the novel states how he stepped away from his sister’s shadow and Lola confronts him. This leads to the reconciliation of feelings and troublesome emotions for Cricket, the guy living next door. This has been blazoned in words that are heart wrenching to the readers.

Perkins describes Lola and her feelings in a way that many readers would connect to. The romance she builds between the characters is worth all appraisal. The description of Lola as the mysterious girl who talked to the moon is beautiful, with the description of Cricket as the boy who watched Lola grow perfect and beautiful day by day. He wondered if the moon would help him in unraveling the beauty of the mysterious Lola. That is when he looks at the sky and was unable to focus on the moon because the stars distracted him and he watched the stars shining brighter with him thinking about Lola. She kept them illuminated. This kind of romantic set up has been a strong point in all of Stephanie Perkins works.

Readers have connected well to the characters of Anna and Lola. Jenny Cohen from Wauconda Bookstore in Hood River, OR, talks about the novel and asserts that “Lola and…” is nothing but a beautiful companion novel to “Anna…” in which there are a few appearances of the familiar characters, like St Clair, as well as Anna. Jenny says that Lola who wears fun outfits and believes that she has the perfect life with her family and boyfriend, develops troubling emotions for the boy who lives next door. It was when her old four neighbours move back into their own house and Cricket Bell, her childhood friend comes to live in there. This is when she has to deal with the feelings she start developing, which is beautifully described. In her previous novel, Stephanie described very accurately what it is like to be a teenager and the emotional turmoil of the teenage life of figuring out a relationship. School library journal praises the novel, saying, the book might fly out of our shelves. The Kirkus reviews calls it a highly enjoyable companion to Perkins’ original masterpiece in young adult category, “Anna…”.

“Isla… Ever After” is the conclusion to Perkins’ beloved series and is a swoonworthy read for every teenager. It features cameos from previous novels like Anna, Etienne, Lola and Cricket. Set against the backdrops of New York city, Paris and Barcelona, it soon became a member of the New York Times list of bestselling novel in Ya category. That makes Stephanie Perkins a highly recommended author in young adult fiction genre. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, Jarrod Perkins and a cat.