Reading about the Last Tsar and his family is a guilty pleasure of mine, so I read everything that is available on the topic.
If you are familiar with the story and the historical context this is an okay read. I think I dragged a little, mayby the original idea of telling about the last days is not really enough for a whole book. So there was a lot of Information around to fill the pages I wouldn't necessarily need. 
I think that the scattered timeline can be pretty confusing for a reader, who is new to the Romanovs.
It served its purpose, not my favourite.

The book follows in detail the last week or so of the Romanovs.  There is background information scattered throughout as well.  Lots of information but delivered a bit on the dry side for me.  Recommend if you want to learn more about the final days of the Romanovs.  Not recommended if you want background on how they got to that point.

Splendidly written

Shockingly biased and not well-researched. 

The author’s disdain for Alexandra is palpable, calling her masculine, overbearing, and prudish; referring to her illnesses as “real or imagined”; and diagnosing her with one of Freud’s women’s disorders. All without objective proof (although how do you prove that a woman is “masculine” or has a Freudian disorder that is, in fact, make-believe?)

She also goes so far as to say that the Romanovs captivity must have been unbearable because it required four menstruating women—a group of people who are “subject to mood swings”—and one “likely menopausal” woman to share space. Apparently, to the author, women are crazy and hard to be around, whether menstruating or not. You would think that she’d never heard of a women’s dorm. It’s a lot. 

But it’s also hard to take anything she says at face value, given her cavalier handling of the facts.
She reports (emphatically and repeatedly) that Maria was found in a “compromising position” with a guard and was iced out by her mother and sisters because of it. The only source for this little factoid is a man that the author herself admits was a drunk and an unreliable witness. Also, not someone who was actually a guard at the house at any point or in any real position to know. 

There’s definitely some irony in the “Notes on Sources” section saying that the Romanovs’ legacy has been commercialized and romanticized beyond all reasonable fact, when it was written by the author of a slew of Romanov books capitalizing on the craze and sensationalizing the information. I get her point— certainly, no human family was as good and pure as this one is often represented as having been, but rectifying that situation would require the author to emphasize the harm this family did to the Russian people. Instead, she has written roughly a dozen books about them purposefully catering to popular gossip and intrigue, spreading falsehoods and her own opinions about their personalities.

The more I read history, the more I understand that history books tell you as much about their authors as they do about their subject; and I don’t think I care for Helen Rappaport.