Annie Heminway

What I liked about the book:
-Pronouns section (14 of the 18 chapters) is nicely organized, it definitely helped me become more comfortable using pronouns in French.
-There are plenty of exercises in the pronouns section.
-There's an answer key
-It's a cheap book - worth getting for the price, even if you only find the pronouns section really helpful. I don't know of any other decent workbook on French pronouns and prepositions.

What I didn't like:
-There is only a French to English glossary, not English to French, and it's not a very good one. There are several common words that a first year student would already know, but it's lacking several less common words that I had to look up. Since in first year you're expected to learn a lot about pronouns, it would be better if this book had translations of the less basic words. I spent too much time looking words up. I went through the Spanish version of this same book and because many words were translated in brackets, that made it user-friendly for even high-beginners.
-The prepositions portion of the book could have been better. It was a bit disappointing. There is so much information - when there is so much stuff that's brought up - there should be many exercises, perhaps spaced out (it would be better if you were given a small amount of information on certain verbs and prepositions that follow them and then exercises, then another bit of info followed by exercises, etc, instead of just a huge amount of information and a few exercises right after).
-There should be more practice with using plaire, manquer, and other verbs like that, because the way they're used confuses a lot of students. This was brought up in the book and explained but there is only one exercise for this with 10 questions (exercise 6-7)
-Sometimes, when you have to translate (from English to French) using a future tense, you don't know which tense you're supposed to use (and of course you want it to match up with the answers in the answer key).
-The answer key gives a single answer for each exercise when there are in many cases 2 or more answers that are correct.… (mais)

Not for the beginner. The introduction says to start again from scratch once the book is finished, because pronouns and prepositions require a lot of work in French. They're probably right. This book does assume a good grasp of vocabulary, as one is asked to practice through doing translations, and there's no prep. For example, one is asked to translate, 'I have glasses' to practice the personal pronoun 'Je'. So, 'j'ai des lunettes.' However, one does have to know beforehand what the French word for glasses is. I would suggest this book for intermediate learners.… (mais)