I Was Anastasia - Ariel Lawhon

I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Bolshevik secret police have always insisted Anastasia was executed via firing squad along with the rest of her family. Others have always insisted she in some way survived. The whole premise of this story hinges on whether Anna Anderson is, indeed, The Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov.
I picked up this book because awhile ago I read Ariel Lawhon’s The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress – and loved it. After that I began following her SheReads blog and learned of this upcoming book. I stalked NetGalley until it was available to request.
I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Anastasia, the Romanovs, or Russia for that matter. In fact, the extent of my knowledge is pretty much that there was a revolution, the Romanovs were executed, but some believe that Anastasia survived. I’m not sure if that lack of knowledge helped or hurt my reading of this book. I was disappointed to not really enjoy it.
The book is told in dual narrative format. Something I generally like in books – especially in historical fiction. In this book, one of the narratives is told backwards in time while the other was going forward. While a daring writing technique, it didn’t really work for me. I was halfway through the book before the backwards narrative even started to be interesting or make sense to me. At the end, I do understand why Lawhon chose to do it that way instead of straight chronological. But that understanding didn’t make the reading any more interesting or enjoyable.
There were also time/age discrepancies in the backward narrative. I’m never a fan of discrepancies.
I enjoyed the Anastasia tale far more than the Anna Anderson plot line. Again, that could go back to Anastasia being told chronologically forward. I think also because the Anastasia narrative covered a shorter time span and had fewer characters to try to place. With the Anna story going backwards, all these people are thrown at you without any context until you get to a future (past) chapter.
I didn’t really like the book. I probably would still buy it for a friend or relative if they are really into the Romanovs and their lives. And it has sparked my interest in learning more through other books. But this just wasn’t my cup of tea.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy. All opinions are my own.
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