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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
Come for the torture, stay for the tortellini.
A genre I hadn’t read in a long time, I picked this book based on some buzz. The audiobook is well performed. The story did pull me along at a good pace for the most part, although at times it did mire down in unnecessary details and plot tangents. This felt like classic espionage with no surprises, and a pretty predictable outcome. It was a little jarring to listen to an explicit torture description, then to bump to the end-of-chapter recipe. A bit of tension relief, I found myself more interested in anticipating which food would be highlighted, rather than the actual plot. Perhaps this genre just isn’t my cuppa.
A genre I hadn’t read in a long time, I picked this book based on some buzz. The audiobook is well performed. The story did pull me along at a good pace for the most part, although at times it did mire down in unnecessary details and plot tangents. This felt like classic espionage with no surprises, and a pretty predictable outcome. It was a little jarring to listen to an explicit torture description, then to bump to the end-of-chapter recipe. A bit of tension relief, I found myself more interested in anticipating which food would be highlighted, rather than the actual plot. Perhaps this genre just isn’t my cuppa.
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked how any time there was food mentioned, the chapter ends with a recipe for that item. An excellent spy novel. Too bad I heard the movie wasn't as good.
Matthews has a teenage boys understanding of women. Dominka is a one dimensional character, drop-dead gorgeous, has an ostensible super-power of synthesia, and is perfect at everything she does.
It repeatedly drilled into the reader that women just don’t belong in the SVR unless they are secretaries, so of course to have a female SVR officer she has to be the best of all women. Give me a break.
The other women are stereotypes of every misogynistic sort.
The “romance” between Dominika and Nate was unbelievable. I just couldn’t believe in the couple because Matthews went from fantastic operational writing to stumbling through an adolescent’s understanding of emotions and intimacy.
Really wanted to like this book, but just didn’t care about the characters, except for MARBLE.
It repeatedly drilled into the reader that women just don’t belong in the SVR unless they are secretaries, so of course to have a female SVR officer she has to be the best of all women. Give me a break.
The other women are stereotypes of every misogynistic sort.
The “romance” between Dominika and Nate was unbelievable. I just couldn’t believe in the couple because Matthews went from fantastic operational writing to stumbling through an adolescent’s understanding of emotions and intimacy.
Really wanted to like this book, but just didn’t care about the characters, except for MARBLE.
I got 70% through it and finally gave up. It started out interesting then bogged down toward the middle of the novel.
The "main" character is a woman, but the real protagonist is the American dude, and the women characters are pretty much male fantasies. There is a lot of gratuituous sexual violence in this book. I read it because I thought it might be an interesting document of contemporary US attitudes about Putin's Russia, and to some extent it's good for that. However, the best thing about it is the recipes, but these don't bear any meaningful connection to the story until the second half of the book when one "foodie" character shows up.
The author every time Dominika appears: You're perfect, you're beautiful, you look like Linda Evangelista
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes