Rasputin's Daughter

When I was in middle school, I was fascinated by Russian history. I especially liked learning about the tsars and the end of royal rule during the Russian Revolution of 1917. An important precursor to the revolution was the murder of the Orthodox priest and tsar's counsel Grigory Rasputin, whose ways were anything but orthodox.

Rasputin's Daughter, novel by Robert Alexander, recounts the imagined final days of Father Grigory as told by his oldest daughter. I had a tough time getting past the voice of the narrator, which I found to be all wrong for a teenage girl. And I don't want to talk about the problems I have with choosing to write a book from the point of view of a daughter whose father was known to have been quite promiscuous.

What I will say is that this book is worth a read if you'd like to learn a little more about the legend of Rasputin. The ending has a pretty good twist, and I liked seeing a side of Rasputin depicted that is rarely discussed in dry history books. But if you don't know much about Rasputin already, or if you have a short fuse for trashy novels, you might want to skip this one.