REVIEW: ROMANOV (Nadine Brandes)

I'll be the first to say that I know nothing of Anastasia, the Russian Revolution, or Disney. I had no ties going into this except for one: a nagging voice in my head singing, "Ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen." And honestly, I didn't even know which queen.

I so very deeply wanted to love this book, but it was an unfortunate let-down. I couldn't convince myself to care about these characters, least of all Nastya. Her narration was repetitive and obtuse, and seemed aged-down. I kept having to remind myself that Nastya was 17 and not 12. At first, I thought that maybe it was mis-marketed and would maybe make a great middle-grade read, but as the story went on (simultaneously too fast and far too slow), it became clear that something was just lacking. Between the limited and predictable word-bank of phrases, the break-neck speed of emotional flip-flopping, and it's declination of the golden rule of writing ("show don't tell"), Romanov ultimately sacrificed a promising concept to lacking execution.

At its core, Romanov is a story about forgiveness. I know this because Nastya tells us — again and again and again. Perhaps my biggest gripe was simply the narrator's unwillingness to allow the reader to come to any sort of conclusion on their own. In case the point was missed (which would be difficult), Nastya tells us how to interpret any given situation. This is an immediate no-no in any story for me. I wish that Nastya would just feel instead of tellinghow she feels. I also wish she wouldn't have immediately and repeatedly correctly guessed extremely obscure facts about the magic she earlier claimed to have little understanding of. Likewise, the dialogue was often clunky and expository, and I had trouble believing that the characters were anything other than vehicles of the moral message of this book. They simply didn't read as people.

On paper (or rather, off-paper), this book is fantastic. If I were to describe it to you, it would hit all the beats of a 5-star read. There were some twists and turns that had me lean back and go, "Huh, this really could have been something." Ultimately, however, these moments came up short in the hands of a narrator who has a poor sense of pacing and/or effective narration. Instead of feeling grief, trauma, joy, or surprise, I was merely alerted that Nastya felt these things in the following sentence. In some ways, it almost felt like it would have made a great screenplay (and a film I would gladly watch!).

All that being said, there were characters I genuinely thought were pretty neat, though we didn't get much page time with them. Conceptually, I thought the blend of magic realism and historical fiction was a great idea, and the magic system (though unexplored) seemed pretty original and interesting.

Overall, Romanov had all the makings of a fantastic story — and that's coming from someone with zero knowledge of these characters and their real-life counterparts. Ultimately, however, it missed the mark for me.

****

I received and ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts presented are my own.

(Originally posted on Goodreads: January 12, 2019)