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Anna K|Jenny Lee

Overview

A national indie bestseller Meet Anna K: every happy teenage girl is the same, while every unhappy teenage girl is miserable in her own special way...

At seventeen, Anna K is at the top of Manhattan and Greenwich society (even if she prefers the company of her horses and 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 an 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.

 

  • ISBN-13: 9781250236432
  • ISBN-10: 1250236436
  • Publisher: Flatiron Books
  • Publish Date: March 2020
  • Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.25 pounds
  • Page Count: 400
  • Reading Level: Ages 14-18

Anna K

In Jenny Lee’s retelling of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, wealthy East Coast teen Anna K trades her staid, old-money lifestyle for ever-increasing risks and romance.

Anna’s longtime boyfriend, Alexander W., is perfect, if a bit stuffy. Independent-minded Anna doesn’t mind that he’s away at college. Her horses and show dogs keep her occupied in Greenwich, away from the rich-kid antics often led by her brother, Steven, in New York City. But when Steven’s girlfriend discovers he’s been cheating on her, Anna rushes to the city to run interference. 

At the train station, she encounters the notorious playboy Alexia “Count” Vronsky, and the trajectory of her life, which she has planned out in meticulous detail, begins to wobble. As other dramas unfold around them, Anna and Vronsky are powerless in the face of their intense chemistry. In a world where reputation is everything, will Anna survive her life-changing love story?

TV writer and middle grade novelist Lee skillfully weaves beats of the classic Russian novel into the contemporary plot of her first YA novel, but readers will need no previous knowledge of Tolstoy to appreciate the social stakes, heartbreak, humor and moral complexity of Anna K. Wonderfully observed details of characters’ clothing, music, technology and slang add to the immersive, effortless flow of these teens’ glittering world, and secondary characters shine as they deal with their own family issues. 

While its melodrama is high and the tragedy of the source material looms large, Lee’s version, tweaked and updated for today’s teens, makes for addictive reading.