Romanov by Nadine Brandes – Review

Published: May 7, 2019

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Series: Stand alone

Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fantasy

Pages: 352 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 3.5/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

The history books say I died.

They don’t know the half of it.

Anastasia “Nastya” Romanov was given a single mission: to smuggle an ancient spell into her suitcase on her way to exile in Siberia. It might be her family’s only salvation. But the leader of the Bolshevik army is after them . . . and he’s hunted Romanov before.

Nastya’s only chances of survival are to either release the spell, and deal with the consequences, or enlist help from Zash, the handsome soldier who doesn’t act like the average Bolshevik. Nastya’s never dabbled in magic before, but it doesn’t frighten her as much as her growing attraction for Zash. She likes him. She thinks he might even like her . . .

That is, until she’s on one side of a firing squad . . . and he’s on the other.

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Back when I was a youngling the Anastasia movie was shiny and new and I thought the whole thing was rather tragically romantic. Also, what if she wasn’t really killed alongside the rest of her family? That’s basically the gist of this book, but with magic, powerful artifacts, and a dash of love story thrown in for fun.

This book follows the general events and timeline of the Romanovs’ capture and final days at the hand of the Soviets. Anastasia is entrusted with the protection of a nesting doll that holds vast magics that may save the Romanov family, but can only be used in the direst of circumstances. A significant amount the plot is dedicated to her hiding/losing/finding/trying to use this item, which upon reflection does make sense since it may be the only thing that can save her family. The remainder of the plot revolved around interactions amongst the family and Anastasia’s suspicion of a particular handsome guard turning towards friendship. The ending portion of the book was definitely stretched a bit far into the fantasy realm, but props to the author for her creativity.

Overall I enjoyed magical retelling of the most well-known royal downfalls in history. It seems to have been written with a great deal of historical research and a creative flair that helped to bring the characters to life. There’s a brief section at the end of the book that describing which events and characters were true to life and what was stretched or outright invented. I enjoy historical fictions that bring forth my curiosity on a particular subject or event – it often ends with hours digging through Wikipedia.