I Was Anastasia

Ive always been interested in the Romanov family and was looking forward to reading this for ages. Just could not put it down once I started. Told so intelligently and with such attention to detail. Wish there was more! Loved it! Book of the year so far!!!

Very interesting,as maybe that was how it was. It amazes me a woman could impersonate Anastasia all those years, i feel she must have been convinced she was Anastasia, there are so many discrepancies, and there could have been a reason, some didn't want to acclaim her, as there were monetary interests involved. It may not have suited certain surviving members of the Romanov's, who can say? the only thing I didn't like, was that it didn't seem historically accurate at times, and people being in places that they weren't, but never mind, still intriguing all the same.

The front cover is too narrow and a purple 2nd page is visible; this seems to be the design, but it makes holding the book and turning the pages uncomfortable.

I Was Anastasia is the amazing story of Anna Anderson, a woman who claimed to be, Anastasia Romanov, the Grand Duchess of Russia, and the only family member to survive the Romanov massacre of 1918.This book is riveting, absorbing, and disturbing. I was engrossed from the first page. The author’s writing is exquisite. Ariel Lawhon, cleverly, and meticulously, described the life of Anastasia Romanov and how Anna Anderson, struggled to prove to the world, that she was the Russian Grand Duchess.I completely lost track of time while reading this amazing novel. It’s obvious that the author thought about each sentence in this book, choosing and placing each word carefully, for maximum effect. The author’s writing is so sharp and raw that the pages came alive for me. The only thing I had difficulty with was the frequent time changes, i.e., one month later, two weeks earlier, etc. The book tells the story of Anna Anderson/ Anastasia Romanov while in Russia, Germany, and America. It also describes some of the despair and pain she had endured as a homeless person on the run, as a prisoner, and as a patient in an insane asylum.I was unaware of the Russian Romanov family history when I started this book, so it truly was an eye-opener for me. The book is fascinating, haunting, and unforgettable.Thank you, Doubleday Books and NetGalley, for my advanced review copy.

I have studied Anastasia and the Tsar's family for many years-and this book is "Anna Anderson" morre or less writing her diary as Anastasia. Very well written and very interesting, but difficult to follow as the chapters go back and forward in time and you're never quite sure where you are. I love the fact that the author says at the end that she knows the rreal Anastasia's body has been found and Anna Anderson was an imposter.

You might have heard about Anna Anderson and her claim (to fame) to be Anastasia Romanov. But, if you haven't, then I suggest you google her and read up on her life. Anna Anderson's life was very interesting and it has btw been made into a movie with Ingrid Bergman and a miniseries with Amy Irving. I've seen both since I find the Romanov's a captivated subject.I was curious to see how of Ariel Lawhon would construct the story since much has happened since Anna Anderson died in 1984. Now I take for granted that you know all about that, but if you don't know, then I will spoil the story a bit. Or rather I will reveal some truth's that may or may not be included in this book. So, read on if you dare!Since Anna Anderson died in 1984 has two things happened, for one thing, has DNA showed that she was not Anastasia, and also the graves of the Romanov's family has been found with the bones of ALL the children. So, how do you write a book when this is well-known? Easy, you make the both Anna and Anastasia's stories so believable that you want it to be true.All through the book does Anastasia's story interlopes with Anna's. We get to follow Anastasia through the years in captivity while Anna's story we get from the end unto the beginning. And, Anna's chapters. It's like reading a book backward. But, it works. It's very different, but it works so well. It's like two cars moving towards each other and you know they will crash, but you can't stop them!I Was Anastasia is a great book. Reading the author's note at the end, where she wrote about wanting to believe that the story would be true made me realize that she made me want to believe that it's true that Anna was Anastasia. Because deep down we all want the story to have a happy ending...

A complicated novel, but every word takes the reader closer to the truth---until it doesn't! A sigh of disappointment was my only reaction when I finished this tightly written historical novel.

An epic novel, beautifully written. The characters were vivid and the story was suspenseful, sad and romantic.Did Anastasia live? Judge for yourself.

This was a very enjoyable read.

I considered beginning this review with a spoiler alert, but after brief consideration realized that really, none is needed. The logical base for this novel - those Tsar-struck and Romanov groupies among us - know the story well, and, unless one was hiding out in the Lost City of Z for most of the 20th century, there is no way the non-Russophile wouldn't know the tale, either. I am not a fan of fiction - especially historical fiction, where a character-creating author attempts to give speech to people who actually existed, complete with their own speech - so I was prepared to dislike this book (one of the reasons I, one of those aforementioned Romanov groupies, passed over it in the bookstore and bought it used on Amazon). We all know, and have for years, that DNA proved Anna Anderson was not the Grand Duchess. So what could this book present that was at all new and interesting?I began it with pad and paper at hand the moment the Anna character (written in the third person - except for the prologue and afterword - and regressing in time) is defined as being "in her seventies" in 1968. Anastasia would still have been in her 60s. The fact that Anderson is in her seventies is mentioned about three times. I then noticed that the Anastasia portion (written in the first person, normal time sequence) mentions her age a few times - and it is correct. So, was the Anna portion in error, or a subtle way of already letting us know they aren't the same person, almost from the first page? I'm not sure. But other minor errors - why change the breed of Anastasia's dog - or was it an error? Why get Tatiana's French bulldog's name wrong? Not to mention an orthological error here, a grammatical error there, and the continuous mis-accenting of a French name which any first year French student knows needs an accent grave...sure, these are minor quibbles, but this is a historical novel, and one that claims to hew closely to fact. The author cites all the books she used in her author's notes at the end, and there are quite a few, all of which are pretty solid historical works. She notes how she combined certain historical personages into one character or changed the fate of Anastasia's dog (the likely spaniel [though I've also read it was a Pekingese, which I doubt] died with its owner, but she has the husky live for personal reasons - fair enough, she explains it) - but all in all, the result is that the book, while being a novel, doesn't actually stray far from historical fact. Even some of the dialogue she takes from published letters and diaries. So why get these little things wrong? Didn't anyone at that renowned publishing house (Doubleday) catch it?In the end, even I, the grand skeptic prepared to dismiss this book entirely, decided it didn't matter. Even I, having read every book and article published about the subject since the 1970s, who knew the details, found myself hurtling along with the narrative and actually surprised at the end. How? How could I be surprised by a story I knew the ending to?I'm not sure how to describe it. Perhaps it was just not knowing how the author was going to wind this up. One notices, progressing, that some of the reasons folks believed Anderson was Anastasia gradually are explained...that all makes sense. Yet I still didn't quite know where the author was heading. By this time the misused diacritical marks or number-subject disagreement were no longer creating slight indignation...I just wanted to see how this wrapped up. Of course, the backward timeline for the Anderson character keeps us in "suspense" (even knowing the answer) until her timeline merges with Anastasia's - Anastasia's progresses to July, 1918, and her murder; Anderson's regresses to her fiance's death in the war, giving birth in a refugee camp, being gravely wounded in a munitions factory accident. I knew all this, and yet I felt somehow surprised, and utterly disappointed that, once again, no Romanov survived that Ekaterinburg basement. It was as if, somehow, the book made me hope again - stupidly, yet it still had that effect - that there'd be a different outcome. The afterword said it all: Anderson rationalizing that we "needed [her] to be Anastasia". Then, the fictional framework for the story makes more sense, and I realized that it really was a much better book than I had anticipated.As I was nearing the denouement, I also wondered why - once DNA proved once and for all that Anderson was the Polish factory worker she was always suspected of being, and not a Grand Duchess - no further books or articles were published about her. Peter Kurth's "Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson" was the definitive work before the DNA testing - not only of Anderson, but of the remains found in 1970 in Russia and publicized in 1991 with glasnost - proved the truth once and for all. Kurth came to believe that Anderson was Anastasia, and it's difficult not to agree. Once the truth was out, Anderson appears only as a footnote in some articles or tomes as the most famous of the many Romanov pretenders.It's interesting that the only book to deal with this fascinating story - perhaps more fascinating now that the truth is known - is this novel. The Author's Notes mentions that she felt Anderson's story was as worthy of telling as Anastasia's, and she has done us a service in partially doing so. I say partially, because we are still looking at Anderson (even knowing the truth, as I said) through Romanov-colored glasses through the book. There have to be living relatives who know something about her early life, who she was before she either perpetrated this grand hoax (or was she convinced she was Anastasia?). The story of one of the greatest frauds (or delusions) of the 20th century certainly deserves to be told. How did she manage to fool even those who should have known better? Did they really just want to believe so badly, like we did? How did she fool handwriting experts and pass that ear-identification in Germany? This is a poor Pole who hobnobbed with royalty and who managed to live on the charity of believing and loyal friends for the rest of her life, passing herself off as Russian royalty. That's worthy of investigation - the supreme human interest story - but no one seems to even have considered it once Anderson's true identity was confirmed. Credit goes to this author who at least saw it, even though she structured the book as a novel and thus still didn't get into the whys and wherefores of Anderson's transformation and their subsequent effects, which take on an entirely new and exciting cast since Kurth et al. reported.The most telling line in the book comes from the lips of the fictionalized Ingrid Bergman, who meets Anderson in preparation for her role in 1956's "Anastasia" (in which the title character was an amnesia victim). Anderson asks Bergman "Do you think I'm lying?" Bergman replies, "I don't care". In the end, the fact Anderson turned out not to be Anastasia is moot for the purposes of this book. We all know that they're not the same person, but in the end, we don't care. Anderson's story is one that deserves to be told especially now that we know who she really was...and it still hasn't been. This novel is the closest to come to it. No wonder the author didn't want to write it but felt she had to. Now, someone, pick up the gauntlet and write the Anderson book that goes on the non-fiction shelf!

To explain…. I read mostly in increments.Meaning I do not sit for hours reading a single novel. I found this story to be frustrating from beginning to end because Ariel Lawton switches the time lines of the story so often that just when you are grasping the story line and understanding characters and events….she pivots to a different time and place, leaving you hanging. The book is clever and the story, in the end, comes full circle, completing the guessing game.