The Last Day of the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport was a historical book. It’s the story of the Romanovs’ after their dynasty was destroyed. The family of seven were taken to Ekaternburg. There the Imperial family suffered with sickness, Alexy, their son’s illness, and close quarters. The book goes day by day starting July 3 all the way to July 19. Rappaport uses parts of Alexandra’s and Nicholas’s diary.

The book seemed bland at most times, but I found the book hard to put down as Rappaport told of the daughters’ personalities and lives. Since they were daughters, it was hard to be appreciated by the public, because the Romanov dynasty needed a heir. There was Olga, the oldest, then Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. They lived boring lives taking care of their mother and Alexy. I was most interested by Anastasia, the tom-boy. Their lives as princesses weren’t the greatest. Then there was Alexy who had haemophilia, a terrible disease which would never let him be tsar.
I found the book hard to read sometimes because it was all facts and got dull after a couple of pages. There would be shocking facts that would surprise me at times. Rappaport remained un-bias throughout the book. On the cover it says, “ [A]s shocking and immediate as a thriller,” I found this to be false because it was not a story or immediate and thrilling. There were lots of dates and important people’s names that were written. Every fact was vital to the story so, you have to pay attention and read every fact.
My favorite quote is, “One might say that her high domed forehead was an indicator of her cleverness and natural wit.” Rappaport was explaining how people thought of Olga. This is my favorite quote because it uses great word choice and gave me a clue on what other people thought of the daughters. This book is for historical readers that want to learn about Russia. I would like to learn about Rasputin and how Nicholas decided to resign from tsar. I would rather learn about those things then what was going on with the Czech war and the Russian Revolution, but those wars were both important to the story. This book would be great to use at the end of a project on the Russian Revolution or the Romanov dynasty. I called this Russian Roulette Hit and Miss because Helen Rappaport wrote a good story that was very historical, but she missed the interesting story.