Review: Good enough plot, but serious flaws
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 12 7, 2013
The story was interesting and suspenseful. However, five flaws seriously affected my enjoyment of the book.1. Misused homonyms: you're for your, cited for sighted.2. Use of similar names and reuse of names. It's hard enough to track in a book where the two heroines are Rebekah an Rachael. But when we add in Lara/Larissa, Misha/Mishka, and multiple characters named Rose and Peter, it just becomes needlessly confusing. Also, Mishka was sometimes called Misha.3. Continuity errors. There was a point where the heroine is addressed by her real name while she is using a pseudonym, several pages before she reveals her real name. There were several points where I had the impression that the timeline was being violated, particularly about Samuel's age, and the timeline around the sisters' marriages.4. Inclusion of pointless detail. The prologue didn't seem relevant to the rest of the story. There were some foreshadowing details that were spoilers, they were so heavy handed. When a character is in mortal danger, you don't need to have another character announce a premonition of death- the fact that the character is in a dangerous situation is ample to clue the reader that a death might occur.5. Uneven historical detail: At one point, the author informs us of which ships the soldier is NOT traveling on, that were shelled. Seriously? It felt like an undergraduate trying to squeeze in every fact she'd researched. And yet, there were important historical details that were violated, for example, a pregnant woman working in 1917. Women didn't work after marriage, much less during the late stages of pregancy, nor did they go back to work '4 to 6 weeks' afterward, Also, even in the throes of the Russian revolution, would people really be so drawn to the heroine's beauty, that they would sacrifice so much to help her out?The end of the book felt both rushed and laboriously drawn out. Perhaps half of the tribulations of the escape from Russia would have been ample.