I’m rarely persuaded or put off by a cover.

Alluring in their trendy shades and focus-group tested designs, book covers are far down the list on why a book may land on my nightstand or in my library queue.

But it’s a good thing I’d already started reading Julia May Jonas’ delicious debut “Vladimir” before I saw the cover.

Let’s just say it’s got bodice-ripper splashed all over it.

And yet, the novel itself is thoughtful and provocative, raising thorny questions about feminism, aging, sex and power. I loved it!

The story opens with an unnamed narrator, a literature professor in her late 50s, who is reckoning with a churlish libertine of a husband, a heartbroken daughter and a crush on the hot new literary sensation who has joined the faculty.

Hating herself even as she succumbs to age-defying spa treatments, a renewed obsession about her appearance and torrid, Vlad-centered fantasies, our narrator is suddenly inflamed with the desire to return to her writing desk.

Jonas, who is also a professor and playwright, says she created a character who ”is torn about what she wants and what she’s allowed to want and can choose to want …”

Last week's mystery character: Hermione Granger

— Kerri Miller | MPR News