I loved a book. Here read my incoherent review of it!

The Last Grand Duchess by Bryn Turnbull

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Absolutely loved everything about this book!

I normally complain about chapters flipping back and forth in time but it was a nice reprieve of it being them in abdication times with the Bolshevik bastards taking them away and away and when things were glamor and good times.

It was also nice to have an Aunt Olga storyline, I never had much about Nicholas' siblings either. It was always Alix and Wilhelm things I learned about when really how often do you talk to your very distant cousins after you grow older and get married right? Same for her.

I've always been an Anastasia everything Romanov "fangirl" so it was nice to focus on Olga the eldest child and not on the youngest sister and the fiction of her survival even though 1991 gave us NO HOPE any of them made it.

I will applaud the Anti- Rasputin sentiments of the Russian people that were included because for real that DID happen and he was indeed murdered! I have studied that in depth myself. I think I even did a speech about it in my college years. The hold he had over them was legit. They feared when he was gone danger would come to the Tsarevich and well we see how history played out. As Steve Berry always does in the end her Author's note displaying truth in her writing and what was solely hers was one of the more enjoyable parts for me as well as I also wanted to know what parts were indeed real and not. I am still questioning exactly how long they were in the two places before the execution order and thankful she did not include that gore in the story. Plus the grace and all they took with them to their graves even though it was anything but elegant. (and the disposing of the bodies so so evil)

I spread out my reading over some time whilst doing other things at the same time as I wanted to take my time to enjoy this book and I really did it was quite lovely. I didn't let my wait a second historian get in the way of the story itself for once.

I cannot think of anything that I did not like about this book at all. Total 5 for me.



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