Kissing Tolstoy
Dear Professor, Book 1

I Picked Up This Book Because: Trying to use up my AudiblePlus time before my subscription expires.

Media Type: Audiobook
Source: AudiblePlus
Dates Read: 3/7/22 - 3/8/22
Stars: 3.5
Narrator(s): Fiona Fischer, Stephen Dexter

The Story:

Review to come..

The Random Thoughts: ( )

This was a short and sweet novel about forbidden romance where a college senior falls for a guy she’s set up with on a blind date by one of her friends, and then later he turns out to be one of her professors. I liked Anna’s independence and thought the chemistry in this one was steamy. Great for classic literature lovers!

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.
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4.5 stars ( )

I’m so conflicted about this book. On one hand, I absolutely loved Luca and Anna’s discussions about books, characters, their philosophies and values and so much more. They were intelligent and thoughtful and really impressed me. I can’t judge the accuracy of the points made because I haven’t read any Russian lit, but I understood the thoughts.

It was the characters I couldn’t connect with. Anna has anxiety, but her overreaction for every small thing just grated on my nerves. Her first choice in any uncertain situation was to run away. She came off as very immature though she didn’t like to be called that way. Luca comes across as a very intelligent, hard working professor and he actually is smart about handling his attraction towards his student by taking the appropriate steps. But we don’t know much about him because we hardly get to read his POV.

I understand that they connected to each other on an intellectual level but I couldn’t totally see their love for each other. Maybe I would have felt more if it was a longer book, but this was too short for me to understand the love. I could definitely get behind the idea that they were great friends. ( )

I partially listened to this on Audible and partially read the e-book. I really liked the narrators on the audio and thought they fit my idea of the characters. Anna is a college student and Luka is a professor of Russian Literature. Anna loves reading and takes Luka's class as a summer course. Unbeknownst to her, Luka happens to be the guy she had a failed blind date with a few months prior. That date ended with her fleeing the scene embarrassed even though there had been an attraction between them.

There is a lot of reference to Russian literature that I wasn't that knowledgeable on, but I wasn't bothered by it. I liked their interaction and how they got to know each other once they got to the point of pursuing a relationship. When they got to that point, I liked how Luka took things slow at the beginning. They only thing I would have liked to have seen was more of the other people in their lives being part of the story. I really liked Luka's sister and we didn't even get to see him show off Anna to her.

All in all, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more like it from Penny Reid. ( )