Author: Sophie Lark
Pages: 686
Genre: Romance, Retelling, Fantasy
Rating: ★★★
Spice: 🌶️
Links
Goodreads ~ Amazon ~ Kindle ~ Audiobook
Anastasia is the princess no one needs: the fourth daughter born to an emperor without a son, and the only royal lacking a magical gift.
Until she collides with a young Cossack rebel, changing both their lives forever.
Damien is taken from everything he knows and raised as a ward of the Romanovs.
Anastasia develops a strange kind of magic shared only by the Black Monk Rasputin.
While her power grows in secret, boosted by forbidden contact with Damien, Anastasia makes a mistake with terrible consequences.
Fate grants her a single chance to set it right… but saving what she lost may cost everything she loves.
Review
I wish this wasn’t marketed as a “spicy” retelling of Anastasia, and I also think it could have benefited from being about 200 pages shorter. If it were, it likely would have been a five-star read for me.We’re all familiar with the story of Anastasia, but this version spices things up with magic and wild vampires. However, I have to voice my frustration over the choice of names—Sophie named Anastasia’s love interest Damien and gave someone else the name Dimitri. The audacity!
That said, I genuinely enjoyed the book. I skipped the synopsis since I already knew the Anastasia tale, so the magic system and vampire elements came as a delightful surprise.
Interestingly, the book wasn’t as spicy as I anticipated; the heat came quite late in this lengthy read. What was there was enjoyable, but it fell short of my expectations.
Overall, I had a good time with this book. It kept me engaged throughout, and I never felt bored. However, I wasn’t a fan of the time jump at the end, which made the narrative feel a bit too convenient for my taste, ultimately bringing my rating down by a star.
Also, this book has such beautiful illustrations throughout it. It was something amazing to go with the story.
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All reviews are always my opinion. I do not get paid to review books or give good reviews. There will be times where books are provided for my honest review. I will always indicate whether a book was provided to me for review.
