Review: Kissing Tolstoy by Penny Reid

“I found that I wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did.”
~ Under the Covers

I’m a big Penny Reid fan, so much so that even when she writes New Adult, a genre that I have a very love hate relationship with – as in, I love to hate it – I still pick the book up. Which, is how I found myself reading Kissing Tolstoy. Not only reading it, but reading it with high hopes! But, sadly by the end I found that I wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did.

That isn’t to say I didn’t like it, I did, Kissing Tolstoy had Reid’s signature quirky heroine and a hero that is slightly different and entirely swoon-worthy. It even made me want to reach for some Russian literature as Anna and Luca discuss it with an easy and casual intelligence that made the Tolstoy Bricks in my library seem like the latest issue of Vogue. Which makes sense as Luca is a Russian Lit professor and Anna, his student, is a Russian Lit aficionado.

But, as much as I loved being in Anna’s head, her smarts and her wit were very entertaining, for some reason I didn’t buy into the romance. Logically I wanted them to get together as they are perfect for one another, in my heart though…I found that I wasn’t that invested. Even though this was a short, novella length book, Luca was so hot and cold and Anna vacillated about him so much…I must try and get through to him! Should I stop trying to get his attention? And so on…and on…and on. I lost interest.

I did like Kissing Tolstoy though, it made me laugh and I really liked Anna’s character, I even enjoyed the discussions about Anna Karenina. However, unlike Reid’s other books, I didn’t fall in love.

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[about-author author=”Penny Reid”]

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