Egg and Spoon

Elena’s life was the pits. Cat’s, on the other hand, was one of luxury. Elena Rudina lived in the middle-of-nowhere, dying village of Miersk, Russia. All the other girls in town had died in a tragic accident two years previous, and the boys and men had been forced to join the army, leaving only the wives with toddlers and babies. And Elena. When a train has to stop for the railroad tracks to be repaired, Elena meets and befriends one of the passengers, Ekatrina (Cat). The two girls are about the same age and look very similar, so when the train starts up again abruptly and Cat falls off, Elena is mistaken for Cat and enters into her privileged life. Meanwhile, Cat is not accepted in the village, and sets off on a quest to get her own life back.

It started out slow, and by started, I mean most of the book. But even if it was slower than I like, it was a good book, filled with plenty of snark. I quite enjoyed the parts with Baba Yaga, Peter Petrovich, Grandmother Onna, and so on. Despite them not all being present constantly, they kept the story alive.