Tash Hearts Tolstoy, by Kathryn Ormsbee, follows Tash, an asexual teen girl who is making a web series adaptation of Anna Karenina with her best friend. When the web series, Unhappy Families, goes semi-viral, Tash has to figure out how to navigate that in addition to her changing family and her growing flirtation with another vlogger via text.

Can Unhappy Families be a real thing? I love web series adaptations of classic books (see my posts about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Green Gables Fables), and I also love Tolstoy, so this adaptation of Anna Karenina seems right up my alley. This book was very much character-driven, and was about Tash reevaluating how she thinks about herself, her sexuality, and her goals as she goes through a bunch of changes in her life very suddenly. This means that it is not a very action-packed plot except for towards the end, but there is so much content that you don’t really notice. From what I could tell, much of the plot felt very realistic (although I personally am not a creator of a web series, so I can’t speak as to the exact production process). As a bonus, for once authors’ attempts at high schooler’s pop culture references didn’t fall flat, which is an issue I have with a lot of contemporary books that rely heavily on modern-day fan culture or other aspects of the internet.

Natasha “Tash” Zalenka is the protagonist, an asexual teenage girl who loves Tolstoy and wants to be a director. She’s also vegetarian and Buddhist, though those play less important roles. Her life changes a lot in the span of a few days at the beginning of the book, and the rest of the story is really about her coming to terms with and learning to adjust to that. Her relationship with her asexuality is a big part of her character as she attempts to navigate her flirtation with Thom, another vlogger who she texts with throughout the novel and eventually meets, as she doesn’t know how soon is too soon to reveal that to somebody, and how much honesty she owes people up front. She also struggles a lot with negative feedback for her webseries once it goes viral, and her issues with that definitely felt realistic in this day and age. I really liked her and she felt very relatable. Though there were some moments where I felt she reacted irrationally in such a way as to hurt her best friends, the book is a period of immense turmoil for her, so I feel I can forgive her that much.

Jack Harlow is Tash’s best friend and the editor of the webseries. She wasn’t my favorite character by far, but she did grow on me. She’s very prickly and not always the most understanding friend, but she also goes through a lot during the book.

Paul Harlow is Jack’s older brother and Tash’s other best friend. He’s much nicer than his sister, and they help to balance each other out as characters. He’s uninvolved in the webseries aspects, but he’s the one who Tash often talks out her issues with.

Klaudie Zalenka is Tash’s older sister, and she was kind of the worst. She drops out of the webseries, which she’d played a character in, at the very beginning so that she could have fun with friends for the entire summer before college, which is an understandable desire, but kind of starts the book off on a bad note with her considering she had made a commitment to be in the entire webseries. She struggles a lot with pressure from her father as the eldest child, since he wants her to follow the legacy of his parents, who were Czech immigrants to the United States and became engineers, but some of the things she said to Tash as a result of that pressure seemed unforgivably cruel.

Thom is the guy that Tash is flirting with via text. He seems nice and understanding, but their relationship felt a bit forced for most of the book until they eventually meet. He mostly existed as the catalyst for Tash’s struggle with what she thinks her asexuality will mean for her in future relationships.

Tash’s parents aren’t central characters themselves, but they’ve influenced Tash a lot. Her father is the son of two Czech immigrants, while her mother is an immigrant from New Zealand. They announce an unplanned pregnancy during the book, which plays a big part in Tash’s feeling of turmoil. It was especially interesting reading about Tash’s relationship with Czech culture during the book, especially since Eastern European cultures other than Russia aren’t normally included in YA fiction.

There are tons of other characters, many of them interesting and unique, but those are the most influential characters on the story. The cast of the webseries are wonderful and I loved all of them.

I really loved this book! The plot being about a literary webseries was basically fated to make me love it, but I also really enjoyed all of the other aspects of it. Tash has a compelling, unique voice as the narrator, and the asexual representation was great, since that’s an identity that’s often overlooked in YA books. She is very thoughtful, even among all of the turmoil that is happening in her life during the book, which makes her perspective on her identities really interesting to read about. Although there were a few parts of the books that felt a little forced, those pale in comparison to the things I loved about the book, so I give it 5 stars.