I finally finished Anna K by Jenny Lee! It took me forever to read (an entire month) but I finished it and now I’m ready to share my thoughts! I’m happy to have read another Book of the month book.
Synopsis
Meet Anna K. At seventeen, she is at the top of Manhattan and Greenwich society (even if she prefers the company of her horses and Newfoundland dogs); she has the perfect (if perfectly boring) boyfriend, Alexander W.; and she has always made her Korean-American father proud (even if he can be a little controlling). Meanwhile, Anna’s brother, Steven, and his girlfriend, Lolly, are trying to weather a sexting scandal; Lolly’s little sister, Kimmie, is struggling to recalibrate to normal life after an injury derails her ice dancing career; and Steven’s best friend, Dustin, is madly (and one-sidedly) in love with Kimmie.
As her friends struggle with the pitfalls of ordinary teenage life, Anna always seems to be able to sail gracefully above it all. That is…until the night she meets Alexia “Count” Vronsky at Grand Central. A notorious playboy who has bounced around boarding schools and who lives for his own pleasure, Alexia is everything Anna is not. But he has never been in love until he meets Anna, and maybe she hasn’t, either. As Alexia and Anna are pulled irresistibly together, she has to decide how much of her life she is willing to let go for the chance to be with him. And when a shocking revelation threatens to shatter their relationship, she is forced to question if she has ever known herself at all.
Dazzlingly opulent and emotionally riveting, Anna K.: A Love Story is a 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.
Rating
3 Stars (I Liked it)
My Thoughts
I considered not finishing this book but when I realized I wasn’t loving the story it was too late so I decided to finish it. Overall, I’m glad I finished it because the last 20% was good. That is why I ended up rating it 3 stars. I listened to the audiobook version (Thanks Libro.fm!) and the narration was great.
This book gave me Gossip Girl vibes (if you like that you may like this one), it features a lot of super rich teenagers in NYC behaving badly (think cheating and drugs). I am a fan of Gossip Girl but I felt disconnected from this love story because I didn’t like any of the characters. The characters seem to love each other for no reason so to me it seemed very superficial.
There is a lot that happens in the last 20% of the book, which is probably what is the most similar to Anna Karenina. I haven’t read Anna Karenina so I can’t comment to the similarities or how well the retelling was done. Thinking back I think the book was too long and some parts could have been left out.
It’s hard to write about what I liked the most about the book without spoiling it. I liked what happened in the last 20% of the story and that it wasn’t a predictable ending. If you’ve read Anna Karenina you probably know how it ends but for me it was a surprise. I ended up liking one of the couples (Kimmie and Dustin) and thought their story was cute.
Who I recommend this book to
If you like classics retellings and like young adult novels you may like this one. I recommend the audiobook version.
If you are interested in reading Anna K. you can get it from bookshop.org here or Amazon here.
