The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg

I remember seeing a made for TV movie, or perhaps it was Danielle Steel's Zoya that first piqued my interest in the Romanov family.  Although I don't know too much about the dynasty, I love reading anything about royal families.   The reviews on the outside of this book touted a history book that read like a "true crime thriller".  I unfortunately, disagree.  This book, heavily researched by Helen Rappaport truly reads like a text book, until Chapter 14.  This is, however, the second to the last chapter of the book.

I hadn't realized that this book would report in great tedious detail every minute of the last days of the Romanovs and their captors.    If I were more a scholar of Russian/ Soviet history, this would be an excellent read.  I found myself skimming and scanning the pages in order to finish the book.  It wasn't until the final pages that I began to become much more interested. 

I found the aftermath of discovering the grave site and the subsequent research to prove the grave sites belong to the Romanov family a much more intriguing story.  All in all, Rappaport's book is a good one, just not the story I happened to be looking for.