Dreaming Anastasia--A Novel of Love, Magic, and the Power of Dreams by Joy Preble
Book Description:
What really happened to Anastasia Romanov?
Anastasia Romanov thought she would never feel more alone than when the gunfire started and her family began to fall around her. Surely the bullets would come for her next. But they didn't. Instead, two gnarled old hands reached for her. When she wakes up she discovers that she is in the ancient hut of the witch Baba Yaga, and that some things are worse than being dead.
In modern-day Chicago, Anne doesn't know much about Russian history. She is more concerned about getting into a good college--until the dreams start. She is somewhere else. She is someone else. And she is sharing a small room with a very old woman. The vivid dreams startle her, but not until a handsome stranger offers to explain them does she realize her life is going to change forever. She is the only one who can save Anastasia. But, Anastasia is having her own dreams…
While this book wasn’t bad, necessarily, it wasn’t that good, either. It focuses on Anne, a teenager who keeps bumping into a hot guy who turns out to be immortal. He’s been searching the world for the girl who can rescue Anastasia from Baba Yaga’s hut, where she’s been essentially frozen in time. Anne, of course, is the chosen one, who has to work with the hot guy, Ethan, who was chosen back in the time of Anastasia to rescue her. The two must work together thwart people who used to be on Ethan’s side, then realized that they’d lose their immortality if Anastasia were freed. Or something. I dunno. It was just so boring I could hardly focus on it. And then there’s the romantic side plot between Anne, a 16-year-old, and Ethan, who is over 100, which was just kinda icky.
This book should have been captivating--Russian mythology, action, traveling through dimensions to save a lost princess--but it was, as I said before, incredibly boring. I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters at all. And the description really doesn’t tell you what the story is about, other than that Anne has dreams that feature her as Anastasia. Nothing about the description calls me to the book, but I guess I at least wasn’t disappointed because I wasn’t expecting well-written action and intrigue. Also, let’s talk about that creepy cover. Is the girl lying down meant to be Anne or Anastasia? Is the creepy blue-eyed werewolf-looking person supposed to be Anastasia, looming over Anne as she sleeps? Or is it Ethan? Isn’t he supposed to be hot? There are also letters written by Anastasia to her siblings and father interspersed throughout, and the font they used to make it look handwritten was incredibly difficult to read. So I was constantly switching back and forth between using 2 brain cells to read, and squinting at the page trying to decipher Anastasia’s letters.Â
(Why did you even read this, you ask? It was a selection in a book club of sorts, chosen by a friend of mine. Anyway, this book somehow has 4 1/2 stars on Goodreads, so I guess it must be enjoyable to some, just not me.)
