awholelottachar's reviews
423 reviews

I really really tried. I wanted to DNF in the first 2 chapters but I made it halfway through the book before I could really bring myself to do it. Basic premise is that Rasputin is actually young and hot and Anastasia has magic and I guess they plan on overthrowing the Romanovs together??? If you don’t know the fall of the Russian royal family is one of the time periods of history I’m always down to watch a documentary about but not like, one of the ones I’m really obsessed with (looking at you MA in ancient history) so I was really excited to see what the author would do with it, spoiler alert, nothing interesting. By the time the story really starts we are already wildly outside of actual history, all the Romanov children are grown up and married (which they never got to do) even Alexi the prince and so far it just seems like he straight up doesn’t have Hemophilia which was the whole reason Rasputin was even brought to the royal palace in the fist place??? Basically there is a really interesting and complex thing going on in actual history and the author says what if not that and I make the king and queen evil to their one daughter (which as far as I am aware they were actually pretty loving parents for royals?) for no real reason. Basically this story would have been so much better if the author had just made up a completely fictional setting for the story but has to make so many changes to historical fact that it is so not worth it, also the magic system is bad and dumb and makes no sense and is a completely over powered fix it for completely contrived conflict. Also Anastasia is the main character and she is characterized so completely shittily I can’t even handle it, her inner monologue is draining, as is Rasputins, actually every POV character is exhausting and sounds like they were written by an overly dramatic 12 year old. I really did not like this book.