She needed to get home, tear up some letters, and go to sleep, because tomorrow she was flying off to start her new life, stronger now, because a boy she loved with all her heart had loved her more. And she deserved it.
Jenny Lee
“Dazzlingly opulent and emotionally riveting, Anna K: A Love Story is a brilliant reimagining of Leo Tolstoy’s timeless love story, Anna Karenina―but above all, it is a novel about the dizzying, glorious, heart-stopping experience of first love and first heartbreak.“
Anna K has been largely popular on bookstagram for quite a while now. It follows the love story of Anna K, an it girl in upstate new york, and her socialite friends. It is a retelling of the classic Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Ultimately it sounds great, it has drama, romance, and intrigue, and I really wanted to like it… But I didn’t.
The main thing that put me off of this book was the writing style. Jenny Lee has history of being a screenwriter for movies and tv shows in LA, and her writing shows it: it is all telling and no showing. This book would have been fine if it was a screenplay, but in the form of a YA romance book, it doesn’t really make sense. The majority of the book was filled with sentences like “she did this, he thought this, they did this,” and it made it really hard to read the book.
Another thing that bothered me was how unrealistic it was. I don’t live in upstate New York, let alone new York, and I am not rich, but I am a high school student (albeit a public high school student unlike the students of this story) but even the good kid, Dustin, did drugs. It kind of felt like she was out of touch with actual high schoolers.
Also, the ending is very confusing and Anna K. suddenly has a revelation that she deserves the love of Vronsky, which is fine, yet it is an ending that comes out of nowhere and has absolutely no buildup to get to that point.
Last but certainly not least was the cringe-y dialogue. I got secondhand embarrassment from some of the things that Anna K. and particularly the things that Vronsky said. Vronksy is a 16 year old boy, and yet many of the things he says seem more reasonable coming out of the mouth of a man who is over 50 during the victorian era.
The one thing that I liked about this was the romances of the side characters, particularly Dustin and Kimmie, and Nicholas and Natalia, and even then they had some flaws.
The book did have a pretty cover though.
| Characters | ★★☆☆☆ |
| Plot | ★★★☆☆ |
| Ending | ★★☆☆☆ |
| Storytelling | ★☆☆☆☆ |
| Overall | 2/5 |
I’m halfway through the book right now Anjali, and I definitely agree with you! It’s kind of hard to care about extreme-rich people problems when they’re just digging themselves into deeper holes because of themselves. The story is eh eh, but I just can’t relate to or understand any of their problems lol
Yes exactly! The “digging themselves into deeper holes” is what bothered me too!