Sashenka
If not for part three of this novel, this would have been a 1.5 star read. I don't want to give too much away (even using spoilers). Part three involves a young girl named Katinka who is hired by a woman to track down her biological parents who gave up their children in the days before Russia would officially enter into WWII. This plot would have been enough for an entire novel by itself. However, before the reader can get to the good stuff, they have to endure parts one and two. Part one describes the end of the Romanov dynasty and Russia's turn to Communism under the leadership of Lenin. The protagonist, Sashenka, is a spoiled teenage girl who revels in knowing how mad her parents would be if they ever knew she was sneaking out at night to join in Bolshevik shenanigans. Part two sees the spoiled girl as an wife and mother. She's still spoiled as the wife of a high ranking party member. Her family lives much better than most of Russia at the time and her primary job is to write articles for a magazine focusing on how to live life as an ideal Communist housewife. Eventually things go back for Sashenka and her family (as they did for so many people under Stalin) and the reader is left wondering what became of everyone. Overall I felt this book was so disjointed. I didn't feel it was necessary to divide the book up in the manner it was written. I think a talented writer (Don't get me wrong, I see potential from this writer but this book just didn't deliver) would have created an intriguing, edge of your seat style thriller by melding the three separate parts into one narrative. I think the events of revolutionary Russia could have easily blended with Katinka's timeline and created a little more seamless story.
