Kissing Tolstoy by Penny Reid is the first book in her Dear Professor contemporary series. We follow Anna an almost senior at university and Luca the man she had a blind date with who turned out to be her new professor of Russian literature.
I gave this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. I loved this book. It has two of my favourite tropes: age gap romance and a teacher/student romance. These trope are not easy to do well due to the obvious taboo nature of them to start off with. However, Reid did a fantastic job with them here. I loved that the issue of ‘position of power’ was address and handled marvellously within the story.
The characters intrigued me and captured my affection from the very beginning. Anna was funny and adorable while Luca was smart and sophisticated. All the characters felt realistic and I enjoyed following them through these events. The romantic content is a bit steamy and fairly graphic a couple times, but if you can look past that (or don’t mind it) then it is worth the read.
The reason it didn’t get a full 5 stars is because I felt it was incomplete. There was a whole section of the story that I think could have been shown or delved into that Reid chose to skip over (it isn’t necessary for the story, just would add depth to the characters and the main romantic relationship); I can’t get more specific or it would verge into spoilers.
Overall, this was a fantastic read and I look forward to the rest of the series.
