I should have known better than to pick this one up, but at least now I can warn the rest of you. This book barely has a plot, the characters are flat and two-dimensional, and their secrets, when revealed, turn out to be not all that interesting after all. Even if reading a book about women using a book club as an excuse to talk about their troubles with relationships, children, etc., is your cup of tea, you can do better. If it's not, Dinner with Anna Karenina won't win you over. Stay away.

I have had Dinner with Anna Karenina on my bookshelf FOREVER! I don’t know when or why I picked it up but the book has been there collecting dust for a long time. After I finished reading Anna Karenina I decided I wanted to read Dinner with Anna Karenina. I thought it would be fun to read a book where the characters discussed Anna Karenina throughout this book. I was a bit disappointed because AK was only mentioned a few times at the beginning and just briefly at the end. Dinner with Anna Karenina was about a group of women who lived in New York who met almost monthly in their book club and discussed one or two books and the authors who wrote them. Every two to three chapters would follow the lives of the characters and how their lives related to the books they were discussing at the time. If you are interested in this book here is the book list of books the characters discuss throughout the book. You don’t need to read these books ahead of time, however if you are a book nerd like me, I think it is nice to have some background on them before you read.

Books mentioned in this book:
Anna Karenina By: Leo Tolstoy
Madame Bovary. By: Gustave Flaubert
The Reef. By: By: Edith Wharton
Reading Lolita in Tehran By: Azar Nafisi
Lolita By: Vladimir Nabokov
The Bell Jar By: Sylvia Plath
Little Women By: Louisa Alcott

Overall I liked this ⭐️⭐️⭐️ star book and enjoyed reading how these books affected the lives of these fictitious women. “They were...no ordinary group, gathering together to kill an evening, to seek refuge from critical husbands and demanding children while idly discussing their new best-seller. They met because literature was their shared passion. Books were as important to them as breath itself. They shared the ability to immerse themselves in the lives of fictional characters, to argue passionately about the development of plots, about decisions taken, dilemmas resolved.”

Overall, I actually enjoyed this book. I love reading books about books, so I found that aspect of the novel pleasing. I will admit however, that due to the dull/long-winded/sections where nothing happened, I took much longer to read this book than my usual novel. I rated this so highly because I feel that the author writes very well. I loved the descriptions and just felt myself drawn in. On a side note, I find it odd that the description provided for this book gives the wrong character names... not really sure why! Conclusion: if you liked The Jane Austen Book Club or similar novels, you will enjoy this for light reading.

if you have a special group of girlfriends or have belonged to a book club, Dinner with Anna Karenina is for you

Conceptually I liked this book, using a book group's books to learn about 6 women's lives, but the story began to drag early on. I waited 350 pages to find out about Cynthia's marriage.

"Wonderful."
-Vera/Munster

This was a nice take on the group-of-friends-in-reading-group plot line. There was a very nice synthesis of the women’s lives and their reading experiences. They chose their books carefully and thoughtfully—they saw themselves in the characters and they learned and grew thanks to their reading. Choices and changes were themes in all of their reading and, ultimately, in their lives as well.

Though this book hasn't received the greatest reviews, I actually really liked it. I was drawn into the story and I felt that the characters were pretty relatable. The novel centers around a book club made up of six accomplished, brilliant women - a psychiatrist, nutritionist, graphic designer/artist, marketing director, school guidance counselor, and a PhD student - all with different personalities, upbringings, dreams, and life challenges. They discuss wonderful literature, mostly classics, such as Anna Karenina (obviously), Little Women, and Sylvia Plath, but their group also become a haven of support to the women as they navigate the curve balls that life throws them. There was a little bit of drama, and I do think that at some points I questioned just how close these friendships actually were, but overall it was a cozy read and I loved the literary references.

I enjoyed this book. It is well written as to the relationship among the six women in a book group. However, the outcome of the various plots was predictable.

A nice read for women - especially women in book clubs!

Good - okay character development but could have been better. Liked Frinday Night Knitting Club better.
Would read more by this author.

Interesting story, tedious at times - felt lilke I was reading a Nancy Drew book for adults. Overly descriptive - too many adjectives.