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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
Interesting for sure but could have been tighter. I'm disappointed their actual deaths were basically a footnote--I morbidly wanted details since Taylor told me the sisters were bayoneted because the jewels sewed into their clothes made the bullets ricochet off. The author bothered to mention them rushing to sew the jewels in, so I felt a bit robbed of the conclusion.
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
I did this on audio...interesting...so much history I don't know!
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
A compelling story about 4 czars' daughters, the family and their eventual downfall and the tragedy that followed. Although we all know how it ended, this only states the facts and no gruesome or cruel details.
informative
sad
Reads more like a textbook than a biography.
informative
medium-paced
The book itself was good, but you don’t really get any details about the sisters specifically until nearly 150 pages in.
A very readable account of the lives of the four Romanov sisters. Rappaport does such a good job illustrating the girls' different personalities, I feel almost like I know them now. It was fascinating to learn just how insular their lives really were all along and how they were so infantilized by their parents (mostly their mother). They experienced so little of life; it adds an extra layer of sadness to the whole thing.
In her author's note, Rappaport states she struggled with her decision about how to end this biography, having already explored the last two weeks of the Imperial family's life and the disposal of their remains in detail back in 2008. I'm not sure she made the right choices here. After such an intimate portrayal, the end felt distant and abrupt, but maybe there was nothing left to be said.
In her author's note, Rappaport states she struggled with her decision about how to end this biography, having already explored the last two weeks of the Imperial family's life and the disposal of their remains in detail back in 2008. I'm not sure she made the right choices here. After such an intimate portrayal, the end felt distant and abrupt, but maybe there was nothing left to be said.
This book reads like a very tragic family portrait. I teared up a few times. I loved that the focus was on the sisters as human beings, not as political figures. But because you're following the lives of very sheltered young women, you will need to have a bit of background to understand the "why" of all the events in their lives, particularly near the end, when the family had virtually no news of the outside world. The book is also rich with details on the sister's personal lives, but sometimes I felt it slowed down the narrative too much. This is non-fiction though, so I guess you can't really edit that heavily.