Spin the Bottle

Olga Romanova, a renowned human rights activist and journalist, suddenly wrote a slick neo-noir. A political thriller with elements of action, a coming-of-age drama with slash fanfiction. It would be a typical yaoi (boys’ love) if she had limited herself... to men, but no.
 
The characters are easily recognizable; you see their prototypes every day on the screens of your smartphones or computers, even if you don't want to see them at all. The action begins in 1974 in the suburbs of Leningrad, moves to Moscow, Kabul, Berlin, Dresden, Petersburg, and ends in a not-so-distant future.
 
It could all be. Or maybe it really was.
 
A cheerful young woman from a Ukrainian village arrives at the beginning of the stagnation era to conquer the Northern capital. She tries to help people, she is smart, she has a knack, she makes a dizzying career, intersecting with the main Soviet woman cosmonaut, a novice KGB officer assigned to Dresden, gangsters, members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, ministers, spies, and hired killers. Without being at odds with anyone, without breaking the rules, by the end of her life she turns into a monster that declared war on her homeland.