The setting of this book captivated me and inspired the later settings in my writing. The plot was original and unique, but I can't give this more than three stars because it took me three reads to understand the ending and it still doesn't make total sense. The reason I shelved this under "inaccurate" is because Ibbotson doesn't appear to know that female Russian surnames are conjugated differently from male surnames, so Anna should be Anna Grazinskaya and the baroness who marries her cousin should be called Larissa Rakova. Aside from that trivial pet peeve of mine, this book was on track for four stars, but feel flat because of its ending.