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A review by carleesi
I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon
3.0
I’m torn on this one. I was hooked into the story and really wanted to keep reading, but there were some parts of the book I didn’t enjoy.
This was my first foray into the history of the Romanovs (albeit fictional) but it’s inspired me to learn more about that period of Russian history. I really enjoyed the way the author wrote about Russian landscapes, it didn’t happen a lot but I felt I could see it for myself.
The timeline jumps were hard to keep up with. It was just a bit too frequent to have a clear narrative thread. It also relied very heavily on trauma porn. The ending was so unnecessarily brutal and graphic (HUGE trigger warnings for this book).I also didn’t enjoy Anna’s chapters except for seeing the characters from Anastacia’s chapters reappear. I think this was maybe because the ending felt clear from early on so Anna felt very unlikeable. It was never explained why she couldn’t say her name and go back to her family. So while the choice to go along with the lie could make sense from a trauma perspective, it just didn’t.
This was my first foray into the history of the Romanovs (albeit fictional) but it’s inspired me to learn more about that period of Russian history. I really enjoyed the way the author wrote about Russian landscapes, it didn’t happen a lot but I felt I could see it for myself.
The timeline jumps were hard to keep up with. It was just a bit too frequent to have a clear narrative thread. It also relied very heavily on trauma porn. The ending was so unnecessarily brutal and graphic (HUGE trigger warnings for this book).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Gun violence, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Violence, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Forced institutionalization