Anastasia by: Sophie Lark

 

Goodreads Blurb: 

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.

The Lark Notes:
I think what captivates us about Anastasia is our dream of what could have been. Anastasia’s death was so tragic, I wanted to give her another life.
This book is not a retelling of any other Anastasia story. It’s set in 1919 in a world similar to ours, but with magic. My next series will be a vampire family saga set in the modern version of that same world.
This is my fantasy of the happy ending Anastasia deserved. Not because she was a Romanov, but because she was a human. I want all of you to have the happy ending you deserve – it’s why I love writing romance. --Sophie

“Anastasia” is an epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance. It is intended for mature readers and contains spicy scenes not suitable for all.

Honest Review Time:

I need all the Sophie Lark stans to not come for me. I didn’t hate this book, I just really wanted to love it and couldn’t.

To say the burn is slow is an understatement. If I wasn’t buddy reading this, I wouldn’t have finished. The first 60% is purely world building because it’s all about Russia. All of it. Yes there are characters, SO many characters, but Lark spends so much time helping the reader understand the world she’s building that is very loosely based on Russian history that it felt like a whole bunch of ‘telling’ and not enough showing. I need to connect with my characters and I just couldn’t do it.

It was promoted on tiktok for so long that I was sooooo excited to buy it when it came out. I had others on my tbr so I didn’t read it til this month and happened upon a buddy read. They were ahead of me so their comments that “once you hit chapter 34, it gets so good” kept me going. Which is sad. The last 40% show that Lark is capable (even with all the typos) of writing an AMAZING fantasy, but I need it to not coincide with ‘historical’ inaccuracies so that I’m not 🙄 every time something happens.

It’s a reimagining, so I understand the changes, and I’m not even upset at the ending—-everyone gets their HEA—- there was just so MUCH before it ever got good.

Overall I’m glad I read it and got it out of my system, glad I pushed through.

3.5/5 🌟
3.5/5 🌶️ (it was advertised to be spicy, but honestly wasn’t that spicy at all—just a handful of scenes)

To purchase a copy of Anastasia, Click Here.