For my preparation for a high school in French I opted primarily to read French novels - best what I already knew. When I came across "Rouge Rubis", which was a real find! Finally, the trilogy is one of my favorite works and I felt Giers writing style not too challenging to understand him in French. By that I should keep right as the French edition is wonderful to supplement a bit their own French - and without great effort but with a lot of fun! I am in the 7th year of learning and was reading through read so - without great reference! I found a little confusing the fact that Madame Rossini, in the German speaking so with a French accent, was not worked out so beautifully. But one gets a glimpse into the everyday French language, which also may be cursed times)
For comparison: Previously I had already read the trilogy Panem in French and felt the French much more difficult to understand - from the sentence structure as the vocabulary!