Score: 2/5 Bookmarks

Steam Rating: 🍆 /5

I read Anna K by Jenny Lee a month or so ago and I’ve been struggling to work out how to write this review. The book is a modern retelling of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and the reviews I read beforehand were all so great, promising Gossip Girl meets Crazy Rich Asians. So you can understand how excited I was. I couldn’t wait to get stuck into a juicy read that I just wouldn’t be able to put down. But what I got instead was mind-numbing boredom.

Book of the Month called it “A darker, dirtier version of Gossip Girl, where filthy-rich Manhattan kids are up to more than you would think.” It’s rare that I so whole-heartedly disagree with the folks over at BOTM, but I feel the book lacked substance, character depth, and there was nothing shocking, or even remotely interesting within the pages. The characters weren’t unlikeable, they were just so completely uninteresting that I really didn’t care what happened to them at all.

I have heard that the book is being made into a TV series, so perhaps this will be one of those rare occasions where the screen adaptation is better than the book? You’ll have to let me know, I doubt I’ll find it within myself to watch it.

When I find myself really unable to enjoy a physical book sometimes I’ll switch to the audio. So I tried that for Anna K. Nope, just as boring. It was a fairly foolproof way to fall asleep for a few nights though. Guess there is always a silver lining.

I wanted so badly to like Anna K, and it just didn’t happen for me. But perhaps you’d like to read it and make up your own mind? You can get a copy by clicking the button below.

Synopsis:

Every happy teenage girl is the same, while every unhappy teenage girl is miserable in her own special way.

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 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.