by Susanne Dunlap
ages: 13+
First sentence: “We are surrounded by guards.”
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Review copy provided by the publisher

Historical fiction is a tricky thing. Mostly, I think, because the author is taking real people and situations and trying to make them compelling and interesting while fitting in the structure bound by history. It’s a delicate balance, one that requires facts as well as enabling the reader to see past the facts to create a whole (albeit fictional) character.

Dunlap has decided to tackle the Romanov family and the years before the Russian revolution. It’s primarily Anastasia’s story, one of her infatuation and romantic involvement with a palace guard who joins the Bolsheviks, in the end. It spans four or five years of time, from when Anastasia’s 13 until after her 17th birthday. Dunlap weaves the romance in and out of the political situation, providing a setting for this princess and pauper story.

I’ll be up front with it: it doesn’t have a happily ever after ending. Dunlap sticks with history and leaves Anastasia’s ending open-ended. But, aside from that, I felt like this book was unbalanced; the romance and the political situation seemed at odds with each other. Either it was that there wasn’t enough of one or too much of the other, but I never really connected with the book. Everything seemed distant and remote, jumbled and disconnected. I wanted to like Anastasia and her love, Sasha. I even wanted to feel sympathetic to the Romanov family, but I never got there. I’m wondering if it was because it was oversimplified to fit for a younger audience, and that things would have been more fleshed out in a adult novel. Whatever the reason, this one didn’t work as well as I would have liked it to.

That said, it’s a grand introduction to all things Russian.