Kissing Tolstoy

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I continue to be impressed by Penny Reid’s writers. She is one of my favorites, and I have yet to be disappointed. It was a fast, easy, engaging read, but I did not give it 5 stars for a couple of reasons. One is that it was too short. I had saved it to read it on a trip and my plane sat on the runway for 3 hours and I almost started and finished the book before we took off.More importantly (and this is my second reason for deducting a star) is that the characters were not developed to their fullest potentials. I was thrilled to see a main character who is a woman of color. I have lamented the fact that the only romantic literature out there was about white women or it has an extremely “urban” bent. There have to be other options, but I have yet to find them. So, it was refreshing to see that this book was about a woman who is half black. I do appreciate the effort, but this ended up being an example why its important for people of color to write about their own experiences. Besides a few references to the fact that she is half black, the book did not cover anything that shows how her experience is unique as a woman of color (although Ms. Reid gets a shout out for mentioning that the main character needed to wrap her hair at night… she must have a black friend). It was lacking in depth. While the notion of a color blind society seems nice, it reality it isn’t. Being a person of color in the US is profoundly different experience than being a white person and it shapes all experiences, especially a romance with a well-off Russian professor. That said, the professor could have been more developed too. They never delved into their shared experience of losing a mother at a young age or other issues.Don’t get me wrong… I really liked the book and am looking forward to the others in the series. I just know that Penny Reid can write great books (all of the Winston Brothers books) and this one fell short.

I first fell in love with Penny Reid’s work through reading the Winston Bros. collection. I love the smart romances and I was impressed with her ability to self-publish without an abundance of flat banter between characters, plain idiotic plot lines, and obvious grammar mistakes.I will be honest, I did catch a few errors. Small things like a misplaced period, an “is” instead of “it.” There weren’t more than 4 mistakes by my count, and they were easily overlooked. I adore Mrs. Reid’s writing style and her fun characters.This book was a cute, quick read. The whole book took me maybe 2.5 hours to finish. Anna is a smart heroine I can relate to. I wish it was longer, to be honest. Her other books have a slower burn I enjoy torturing myself with. But I still enjoyed reading about Luca and Anna, even though I know exactly nothing about Russian literature.

So I just finished, I put it off because I knew I needed to get over my murder mystery phase before I could truly appreciate another Penny Reid marvel. *sigh*It's so utopic living in this Russian literary world. If I were 21 in love with my ex-professor I don't know what or how my world would have turned out, granted never did I have a remotely attractive professor in college. What I did get out of this one was a whole lot of feels, the language was rich and the love so ready to bloom and I am a willing participant to follow this path should Ms.Reid decide to add Kroft trials and tribulations to her expanding family of stories. At this point should could put out random knitting instructions in Russian with a Southern accent and I would be right there with my Google translation set ready to go! Another wonderful Reid romance...*sigh* loved it.