Rating: 2 stars
You know that feeling when you fly through the first 100 pages of a book and think it’s going to be an easy 5 star? But then somewhere after the 50% mark the book starts to annoy you? Yeah, that was pretty much my experience with From Lukov with Love.
The first 100 pages had me hooked. I loved Jasmine’s sassiness and adored her scenes with Ivan. However, somewhere along the way the book started to really annoy me.
Here are my issues with this book:
-I get that it’s a slow burn but each conversation dragged on unnecessarily. Whole chapters would be dedicated to things that only needed a page or two
-Jasmine’s internal monologue got very tiring (not to mention boring) after a while
-Ivan bugged me so much. He did a lot of problematic things that were romanticised?! Since when is body shaming someone considered banter? Since when is victim blaming considered hot? Since when is getting involved in a woman’s life you have no meaningful connection to considered romantic?
-The use of baby with absolutely no relevance – so awks
-Far too much blinking, far too much mouthing of insults, far too much poking on the forehead (yep, that was a thing), far too much nostril flaring
-Every interaction between Ivan and Jasmine is basically the same. It’s just a constant back and forth. Ivan telling Jasmine to do something and Jasmine refusing until she eventually relents.
-Ivan saying I love you at the most inappropriate time and not be apologetic about it
I’m not sure I’ll be reading anymore Mariana Zapata books if the others are anything like this one. The beginning of this book was so promising. I thought this would be a nuanced story of a woman trying to slowly let her walls down while also learning to be kinder to herself, with a good dash of romance. But nope. This ain’t no Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Most Memorable Quote:
“Challenges were only hard if you went into them expecting not to succeed”
Love,
