Katheryn_Gallant

The last grand duchess of the novel's title is Olga Nikolaevna, eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his wife, Empress Alexandra. I find this book hard to review: I wanted to like this book more than I did. The book is written well and it held my attention, but the use of dual timelines (1917-1918 and 1913-1916, with a prologue in 1907 and an epilogue in 1952) distracted me a lot. I wonder how the novel would have worked if it had used just one timeline and not shifted from one to the other.

I enjoyed reading about Olga's innocent romance with Dmitri Shakh-Bagov, a Georgian officer in the Russian Army whom Olga meets when an injured Dmitri is sent to the hospital Olga works at as a nurse during World War I. Although I have read other fictional and nonfictional works about the fall of the Romanovs, I had not previously known about the Olga/Dmitri romance. I also liked reading about Olga's growing awareness of how the flaws of her parents helped bring on the Russian Revolution, even though she continues to love and care for them.

Bryn Turnbull's inclusion of a list of characters, author's note, glossary, and bibliography is a plus. The book cover is lovely.