From Lukov with Love by Mariana Zapata

🌟🌟🌟🌓 out of 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Synopsis:
If someone were to ask Jasmine Santos to describe the last few years of her life with a single word, it would definitely be a four-letter one.

After seventeen years—and countless broken bones and broken promises—she knows her window to compete in figure skating is coming to a close.

But when the offer of a lifetime comes in from an arrogant idiot she’s spent the last decade dreaming about pushing in the way of a moving bus, Jasmine might have to reconsider everything.

Including Ivan Lukov.

This book was good at pulling me into the story. It was easy to understand Jasmine's level of anger and frustration by hearing her talk about the hardships she had had to cope with in her ice skating career. From Lukov With Love was very character driven but was told from Jasmine's point of view so readers will only really understand her background. I would have liked to have learned more about Ivan. He was a bit of a mystery regardless of what was shared about him throughout the book. Ivan was not who I thought he was at the beginning of the story and I'm glad that I was wrong about him. I didn't find him very likable at first because he seemed like an extremely cocky  bully. There is more to him that meets the eye. Jasmine struggled so much in her life and sacrificed so much to make her dream come true. She never gave up even when there were people talking trash about her. I thought that was admirable and despite her not always thinking through the things that came out of her mouth I found her to be a wonderful character.
I feel like the book was bogged down by too much description and inner dialogue. There were moments when the author took pages to explain one concept when it could have been done using a paragraph or a page. It made the story more difficult to get through and I almost gave up on the book altogether. I'm glad I stuck it out because I enjoyed how the love story unfolded between Ivan and Jasmine. I'm not sure that I understand why they interacted the way that they did for so many years but that's neither here nor there. I loved how each of them were changed for the better due to their partnership.