I didn't love everything about the storyline that ran backwards--I didn't mind the backwards format, just wanted things to fit together a bit more. For example, Maria Rasputin at first seems like she'll be an important character, but then sort of just disappears. I did, however, really enjoy the other storyline, and I loved the ending. How the author wrapped it all up, for me, kind of helped me overlook anything else that I didn't really appreciate. So overall, I really enjoyed it and it kept me interested. (Of course, I didn't know anything about what had been discovered about Anastasia in the last 20 years.)

Some favorite lines:

"Virginia in August feels very much to Anna as though she has taken up residence directly in the white-hot center of Satan's armpit."

"It is the first time I pity my mother, the first time I see her as completely human. A woman who can be broken by something as simple as a headache. It is an unsettling realization, and I wonder, if she, with all her age and experience, can be broken in such a way, what will become of me?"

"He seems like the sort of man who would celebrate feeble attempts."

"Only in Latin can one root word be the basis for myriad appalling descriptors. Horrible, vulgar, violent words. Brutish and masculine. I hate them all and the language from which they originated. Latin deserves to be a dead language, and I do not mourn it."

"Yet I knew now that both Gilliard and Nicolas Poussin were mistaken about the most fundamental aspect of the story: There is nothing artistic about rape."