Anastasia Romanov, the youngest daughter, and the fourth child of the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his wife, Alexandra, was long rumored to have somehow survived the ruthless and grisly death by firing squad her family of seven and four servants suffered at the hands of a group of Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918, in a dank cellar in a merchant’s house in Ekaterinburg, Russia where they had been imprisoned. The woman who claimed for decades to be Anastasia assumed the name of Anna Anderson. She spent her entire life, until she died in 1984, trying to convince the world that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia.

Even if you know the history, this book is still worth every hour of your time to read. Author Ariel Lawhon has ingeniously structured this novel in a way I have never seen. The story alternates chapters between Anastasia and Anna, but Anastasia’s story moves forward in time, while Anna’s moves backward—until the two converge. It is brilliant, and the effect is powerful, if not haunting. The story builds and builds and builds, and suddenly you cannot stop reading because it becomes that captivating! And this still holds even if you know your history, so don’t let that stop you from reading this deftly written and multilayered novel.

I enjoyed this keep-you-guessing format. The novel reads with a much faster pace than your typical historical fiction but with the familiar genre of a large and complex cast and wonderful scenery description. The characters are well-done with thoughtful complexity and I enjoyed watching Anna’s/Anastasia’s development into whom she becomes over time. The events in the protagonist’s life are well-researched and harbor the true darkness found in honest historical accounts.

The ending of the story made the whole book worth every word that was written - it was outstanding. It was hard to put the book down until I got to the very end because I just had to know what happened. The author took liberties with some of these historical events (she mentions this at the end of the book) and she turns it into a gripping tale. Even though the author added elements to the story, the timeline and most of the events remain true to the historical facts, which I appreciated.