Anna Oliphant

Anna was born in Atlanta, Georgia sometime in February of 1992. She has an 8 year old brother called Sean, who she once referred to as "either an accident or a last-ditch effort to save a failing marriage". Her family has Scottish ancestry, which is why her grandfather was upset to hear her brother was being named Sean and not Malcolm or Dougal. Her mother is a biology teacher, specialized in marine turtles, and her father is the author James Ashley, writer of romantic books which Anna describes as trashy and purely clichés. Her parents got divorced seven months after Sean was born, causing her father to leave them and move to another city, which is why Anna is so angry at him in the book. Her greatest wish is to study film theory in California and become one of the greatest female critics of all time, with a TV show and an online blog.

Anna and the French Kiss
In Atlanta, Anna has everything she could ever need: she has an awesome best friend called Bridgette Saunderwick, an awesome job in the local theatre and an awesome job partner, Toph, who she has a major crush on. However, all of her life seems to fall apart during the summer before her senior year, when her father abruptly decides that she will spend her last year of high school in the School of America in Paris, France. Anna is freaked out at first, claiming all that she knows about Paris is movies that are set in it like Amelie and Madeline, the Eiffel tower and the Arc de Triomphe, and historical figures like Napoleon and Marie Antoinette. She is furious at her father for making her abandon Bridgette, her mother and Sean, but specially for leaving Toph, who she had recently kissed and was really getting close to.

However, once she gets to campus and her parents leave her there, what really freaks her out is being alone in a country where she doesn't know anyone or doesn't even speak the native language, and all she can do about it is cry. Listening to her sobs, someone knocks at her door, which turns out to be Meredith Chevalier, a girl from Boston who loves soccer. She is friendly to Anna and invites her to her room, where she hands her a mug of chocolat chaud, which helps her calm down. Anna is amazed by how well decorated Mer's room is, filled with posters of The Beatles, Cesc Fabregas, and little cups with plastic rings on them. Meredith tells her about her friends and after a two hour talk, she tells Anna they can sit together at Breakfast, which is a relieve for her. When she's leaving Meredith's room, she bumps into a gorgeous boy: Meredith's friend, Étienne St. Clair, who is as gorgeous as he is taken.

After a rough first night, Anna meets the rest of the gang at breakfast: she meets Josh, a junior boy who is a talented artist, and his girlfriend Rashmi, who is bitter as her best friend, Ellie, who happens to be St. Clair's girlfriend, left for college and never called her back. Anna struggles at first with the language, a problem that costs her several meals and breakfasts, until she realizes Parisians can speak English as well as she can. St. Clair helps her with her French and helps her get out of campus as well, being him the first one to show her the magic of Paris. He takes her for a walk on a Friday night and they end up standing in the Point Zéro des routes de France, where he tells her to make a wish. She doesn't wish to go home because if she does, she would be disappointed for not giving Paris a chance; she doesn't wish for Toph because even if he likes her, it wouldn't last with her moving to California for college the following year, and she cannot wish for St. Clair because he has a girlfriend and she knows Meredith is in love with him as well. So she just wishes for what is best for her.

As the year passes by, Anna bonds with all of her new friends in SOAP, but with St. Clair it was instant chemistry. She constantly visits cinema theatres around the city, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, and she takes down notes in her notebook after she finishes them to make a review in her blog, femme film freak. As she and St. Clair grow closer and closer, so do her feelings for him. In Halloween, they are all making a picnic in the Cimetière du Père- Lachaise when Anna and St Clair decide to visit Victor Noir's tomb, which is said to bring luck in fertility if you rub his intimate parts. When St Clair refuses to rub Victor because he "doesn't need that kind of problem", Anna is so jealous by thinking about him and Ellie having sex, that she accidentally tells him she's a virgin. However, their conversation comes to an end when St Clair receives a call from her mother, telling him she has cancer. That night a drunk version of Josh and St Clair visit Anna's room after going to a pub. Before nearly passing out, St Clair confesses Anna that he likes her as more than a friend and when she asks him about Ellie, he tells her it hasn't been right since he met her. However, when St Clair asks Anna the next day whether he said something odd about their relationship to her, Anna feels it's the right choice not to tell him, as it would ruin both their relationship and his relationship with Ellie, and he couldn't deal with that at that moment.

Their relationship grows even more when they both stay for Thanksgiving, as St Clair's dad won't let him visit his mother in San Francisco because of his low grades and Anna's dad won't spend so much money for her to go home only for four days. St Clair enjoys Anna's company so much that after a whole day of being together around Paris, he asks her if he can sleep in her bed, which he does, for the whole weekend. Even though they seem to be really close, St Clair starts to ignore Anna when all of the students come back, they start fighting over silly things and he resumes his daily visits to Ellie.

When winter break comes, they arrange to drive to the airport together as they have the same flight to Atlanta. However, it's only when they arrive to the airport that they remember they won't be sitting together as they didn't book their seats next to each other. Still, St. Clair asks the passenger next to his "pregnant girlfriend" to let him trade seats, as he needs to be there to hold her hair when she throws up. As he always gets away with everything he wants, Anna and St Clair enjoy their eight hour flight together until it's time for them to part in different ways.

Even though she longed to come home all of the year, Anna comes back to Atlanta only to find it doesn't feel like home to her anymore. The first night she attends Bridgette and Toph's band concert, where she finds the unpleasant surprise of learning Bridgette and Toph started dating during Thanksgiving and Bridgette hadn't told her a thing. With the help of her ex boyfriend and best friend, Matt, and his girlfriend, Cherrie, she gets out of there and manages to call St Clair. After telling him everything, Matt and Cherrie drive her home, where Matt tells her she's too good to be crying over Toph, and that he hopes that whoever she was talking to at the phone in his car was better than him. Anna and St Clair are in contact with each other the whole break, exchanging emails, texts and calls. Bridgette tries to call her but she refuses to talk to her. After an awful Christmas and an awful holiday, Anna returns to Paris. It's only when she sees St Clair again that she realizes she's completely in love with him, and she starts calling him Étienne.

In February, Josh, Rashmi, Meredith and St Clair agree to get Anna drunk in honor of her 18th birthday. They all go to a bar, where both St Clair and Anna get drunk. Anna sees Étienne talk to Meredith and gets so jealous that she practically drags him to the dance floor. A friend of Ellie's sees them very close to each other and starts yelling at Étienne. He gets really mad at this, which makes Anna be mad at him. They end up yelling at each other and Anna finally asks him why doesn't he break up with Ellie if things are so bad. At this, St. Clair tells her he's afraid of being alone, and Anna tells him that he was never alone, not when she was around. Rashmi and Josh take Anna home while St Clair goes to Ellie's dorm.

The next day Anna and Étienne have a talk where he asks her to wait for him until he can figure out what to do, and suggests for them to be friends. Anna gets irritated by this and starts calling him St. Clair again. Anna is so mad at St Clair for being so indecisive that she even starts dating Dave, a junior who he totally hates. St Clair is miserable and angry at this, so they start fighting again until she breaks up with Dave and he helps her recover her key to her room. He confronts her when she starts thinking about Toph and Bridgette going to prom together and how she'll never have one because SOAP doesn't host proms.

Spring arrives and the day they all go to watch Mer play football, St Clair and Anna get bored of it and go together to Les Jardins de Luxembourg. There they share a romantic encounter and Anna asks him to kiss her, which they do until Meredith finds them. She flees the scene, hurt by Anna's betrayal, and St Clair follows her, leaving Anna crying with Rashmi and Josh. They take her home once again. Anna tries to talk to Meredith but she snaps her out and tells her that St Clair ditched both of them, as he went back to Ellie's after talking to Meredith. Anna starts to cry and locks herself in the bathroom. Amanda Spitterton Watts, the school's meanest girl, starts to tease her about her platinum stripe and calls her a skunk, as well as a bulimic. Anna decides to ignore her, until she calls Mer "a dyke", which triggers such anger in Anna that she attacks her and punches her in the nose, making her bleed. In front of this situation, she's sent to the principal's office but refuses to tell her what Amanda said about Mer. Even though a red headed junior, Isla Martin, defends Anna for standing up to Amanda, she still earns two weeks of detention.

The rest of the week is tough, since she's ashamed of what she's done to Mer, therefore she cannot sit with her friends, and she yelled at St Clair for rejecting her for Ellie after kissing her, so she's not talking to him either. What's worse, Amanda and Dave start spreading rumors about her sleeping with Dave only to make St Clair jealous, calling her names in the hallways. When Dave calls her slut, she confronts him, but when he calls her slut again, its St Clair this time who leaves him and his best friend bleeding and earns two weeks of detention for himself as well. In detention they fight again because of how much he has hurt her by leading her and giving her hope when he had a girlfriend and he tells her that he was with Ellie that day because he was breaking up with her, they were about to kiss but was interrupted by Josh who got detention for ditching class. After detention, Anna talks to Meredith and apologizes again and they make amends. Meredith tells her that she knows she's in love with him and that she knows he's in love with her, and tells her that if Anna doesn't try to give him a chance, she'll be mad. After realizing the situation with Meredith is exactly the same as the situation with Bridge, Anna sends her a package with a toy bridge and an apology letter.

Anna then finds St Clair and his dad on the street and eavesdrops to hear their conversation. She learns that St Clair wants to go to Berkeley, in California, but his dad wants him to stay in France, so that he can keep an eye on his son. A woman approaches them and his dad changes personality dramatically and starts flirting with her; that's when St Clair notices Anna. At first he's mad at her, but when she shows concern for him, he lets her advice him on the matter. She tells him to talk to everyone his father knows and tell them how glad he is that he's going to Berkeley next year, and his father will do anything to keep up with appearances. St Clair thanks Anna and leaves to proceed the plan, which turns out to work.

Anna goes back to her room but realizes she only has a few weeks in Paris and she still hasn't seen the inside of Notre Dame. She hurried there because she has a feeling she needs to be there at that exact moment. She passes Point Zéro and goes directly to the stairs. She climbs and climbs and climbs until she reaches the top, where she can see all of Paris and realizes she doesn't regret going there, and she's actually thankful to her dad, as he only wanted what was best for her. That's when she hears a scream and fears someone may have fallen down the stairs, but when she goes to offer help, she finds St Clair totally freaked out because of his fear of heights. Anna asks him what he's doing there and he tells her he saw her when he was standing in Point Zéro, but she didn't hear him when he called her name, so he decided to follow her up. He asks her to help him get to the top, where they clear their misunderstanding and Etienne confesses his love for her and tells her he's loved her from the very first day, and how he always wished for her in Point Zéro and he wants to go to Berkeley only to be 20 minutes away from her. They kiss and kiss and kiss and Anna tells him she loves him over and over again.

By the end of the book, they are happily dating. Meredith is okay with their relationship, Josh and Rashmi have broken up because of all of the fights. Rashmi would attend Brown the following year and Meredith would study in Rome, while Josh had to spend another year at SOAP with all of his friends gone. While being in Anna's room alone, she realizes that for both of them, home is not a place, but a person, and that they're both home in each others' arms.

Lola and the Boy Next Door
In Lola and the Boy Next Door, it is revealed that she and Etienne are still together. Anna studies film theory and St Clair studies at Berkeley, alongside Cricket Bell. In fact, Anna and Etienne make references about spending their whole lives together, even though everyone else thinks they're rushing up things. Also, Anna is considered to be one of Lola's friends, as they work together at a local movie theater. They both help Lola figure things out and tell her when things are wrong.

Isla and the Happily Ever After
In Isla and the Happily Ever After, Étienne proposes to Anna in Paris after eating in their Sunday Pizza restaurant with all of their friends watching, including Isla, which she happily agrees to.

Physical description
Anna is described by St Clair as beautiful and with perfect hair. She's 7 cm taller than St Clair, and has a "raisin-sized" gap between her front teeth. She has dark hair with a bleached stripe, which she usually needs help to bleach. She's described as an attractive girl, which is why many men stare at her, as St Clair once pointed out.