Good but not great.
I hadn't really realised just how in-bred and widespread the descendants of Queen Victoria were. I had a hard time keeping up with them all in this book, despite the helpful (messy!) family tree in the front of the book. Especially with all the nicknames!

I listen to this book. I really enjoyed it.

I think three stars might have been a bit generous really. It's an interesting story but the writing is a bit... basic, for want of a better word.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this quite as much as I did, although I do love a good historical novel. I think, apart from being compelling and relatively well-written, I also didn't know a huge amount about the Russian revolution and world war 1 from that perspective so I found it very interesting. But it is a romance at heart... recommended for a great story and an easy read.

I've never read anything by Laurie Graham before, and to be honest the only reason I picked this up was because the Romanovs and Russian history in generals are great passions of mine.

Initially I found this quite dry and hard going as I flipped back to the family tree every couple of paragraphs. After a while I decided to stop and just go with the flow of the novel, which made a big difference.

Overall a brilliant novel that genuinely bought history to life. Laurie Graham made the historical figures feel real and relevant.

I reviewed this book for novelicious: http://www.novelicious.com/2014/12/review-the-grand-duchess-of-nowhere-by-laurie-graham.html

Ducky, the titular Grand Duchess, is Princess Victoria Melita – through her father she’s one of Queen Victoria’s many granddaughters but through her mother she’s a granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II. Her story takes you from a minor German princedom to a ringside seat as the Russian revolution gets underway with terrifying consequences for Ducky and her extended family. But it’s also an unusual love story – as Ducky fights back against “Grandma Queen’s” obsession with marrying off her descendants and tries to manipulate royal protocol to get her man.

These machinations eventually take Ducky to Russia and of course the last Empress – Sunny – is another cousin. This means that Ducky is always hovering around the outside of the Imperial inner circle, leaving the reader perfectly placed to get the inside scoop on the dying days of the Romanovs.

Reading Ducky’s story is like having a chat with a friendly (and possibly slightly drunken) old lady that you got talking to at a cocktail party. She’s witty, a little bit indiscrete and not particularly politically astute. I’ve no idea how much of it is truth and how much is invention – but it is wickedly entertaining reading. There’s a large cast of supporting characters – Ducky’s extended family is sprawling, complicated and rife with nicknames. But it’s a testament to Graham’s writing that I only had to refer to the family tree at the front twice – on both occasions near the start of the book.

I’ve read quite a few of Laurie Graham’s novels and my favourites are the ones, like this one, which take a sideways look at history – you know how it is going to turn out but it’s a lot of fun finding out how you get there. But The Grand Duchess of Nowhere more than that – Ducky is not just a not-entirely-disinterested observer of the downfall of the last Tsar, she’s also got an interesting story of her own as she tries to make her mark in the world. This isn’t my favourite Laurie Graham novel – that title still belongs to Gone With The Windsors – but it runs it pretty close.
9/10

Told through the eyes of Ducky, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. You follow her through marriage, divorce, a second marriage and revolution. The downfall of Tsar Nicholas is a big part of the backstory, so you have some interaction with the Tsar and his family, mainly Alexandra who doesn't get along with Duck though they are cousins. Namely due to the fact that Ducky divorced Ernie, Alexandra's brother..

Perhaps I'm bias when it comes to my favourites in history, but I didn't care for Ducky or the way she acted and treated some of her family, namely Ernie and Alex.

Ducky's character felt childish and some of the dialect felt too childish at times as well.

The book could have been made a lot shorter without all of the unnecessary historical bits that were thrown in. I get that you want to give people an idea as to what is going on, but I felt like I was reading a boring history book at times, and I love history.

Historical fiction would probably be my favourite genre and this did not disappoint. The Grand Duchess of Nowhere, Victoria Melita (granddaughter of Queen Victoria), married her Romanov cousin and moved from Bavaria to Petrograd. This story encompasses WWI and the Russian Revolution but focuses on 'Ducky', as she is known, only touching on the other members of Russian royalty. I did appreciate the epilogue where it covered the latter years. Nice to read about Russia from a perspective other than Nicholas & Alexandra, albeit still the privileged side.