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namsmommy09's review against another edition
listened for more than an hour, just not keeping my interest.
charlibirb's review against another edition
3.0
The story was good, but I could never really recommend it because of the salacious style of the writing - it got pretty old pretty fast. Also, it jumped around unnecessarily, and the number of times "mission" and "operative" and "operation" were said drove me bonkers. The guy reading the audiobook, Tristan someone, should be reading romance novels, not history stories.
kahale's review against another edition
3.0
Mrs. Pac is an American who is married to a British diplomat. She is recruited and spies for British intelligence in WWII in such places as Chile, the U.S. and Poland. She does pull off some spectacular coups but has to sleep her way there.
joli_folie's review against another edition
1.0
I struggled through this book thinking with such a decent Goodreads rating it must be me. This wasn't a biography so much as a tabloid recounting of a woman who jumped in bed with pretty much anyone and was constantly finding herself pregnant.
Don't waste your time with this one, there are too many great books out there on WW 2 that aren't this one!
Don't waste your time with this one, there are too many great books out there on WW 2 that aren't this one!
ggwweenn1's review against another edition
5.0
This is a great read if you like looking into the history of espionage. It is engaging, well framed, and funny. Betty Pack is an excellent subject to be written on and her exploits would make anyone want to dive into the covert world.
snorthington's review against another edition
3.0
This book was full of interesting moments and incidents that were happening in the world of diplomacy and early spy agencies, with collaboration between the British and American secret services.
While the interest was there, the stories sometimes felt like they were lacking evidentiary support for this to be a true nonfiction. I know that the author did the best he could with the sources he had, but when he got into people's minds and thoughts were outside of quotations, it just rubbed me wrong.
However, if you have any interest in espionage, World War II, diplomacy or human behavior, Han I think you should read this book.
While the interest was there, the stories sometimes felt like they were lacking evidentiary support for this to be a true nonfiction. I know that the author did the best he could with the sources he had, but when he got into people's minds and thoughts were outside of quotations, it just rubbed me wrong.
However, if you have any interest in espionage, World War II, diplomacy or human behavior, Han I think you should read this book.
ceeemvee's review against another edition
4.0
This is the story of World War II spy, Betty Pack, codenamed Cynthia. Betty was born Amy Elizabeth Thorpe on November 22, 1910, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Betty was meant to be a spy. She was certainly masterful in the art of deception, and had no compunction about using people to gain the information she was after.
Betty’s father was a distinguished U.S. Marine Corps officer and her mother’s life mission was to further the family, and her children, in society. She entertained lavishly, and her dinner guests included the vice president. Betty, however, wasn’t having any of that. She was pregnant by one man, but chose another, Arthur Pack, to be her husband. Pack was with the British embassy, and perhaps Betty saw marriage to him as a way to travel the world. They never loved each other, and she seemed to barely tolerate him later in life. Betty’s son was born, and it was determined to be best that a foster family raise him as Arthur was being sent to Spain. Once in Spain, Betty is still presumably sleeping with her husband, she has a lover, and is also sleeping with a priest who is helping her convert to Catholicism! That’s right. You can’t make this stuff up. Her lover is imprisoned, and she leaves her husband and a second child, Denise, to try and free her lover. Well, she frees a marquis along the way, and ends up being recruited as a spy for MI6.
Betty loved the intrigue. She would seduce men, become their lover, and elicit all manner of secrets. She was quite effective at her job, and even after some men found out they had been played and she didn’t love them, they were heartbroken that the relationship ended. They weren’t heartbroken over the fact that she didn’t love them and just used them. They would have waited the remainder of their lives for her.
Betty was credited with obtaining valuable ciphers, codes and secrets that helped the Allies immensely and changed the course of the war. Betty was never troubled by her actions, until later in life when she was facing her own mortality and examining her life. Like I said, she was meant to be a spy.
https://candysplanet.wordpress.com
Betty’s father was a distinguished U.S. Marine Corps officer and her mother’s life mission was to further the family, and her children, in society. She entertained lavishly, and her dinner guests included the vice president. Betty, however, wasn’t having any of that. She was pregnant by one man, but chose another, Arthur Pack, to be her husband. Pack was with the British embassy, and perhaps Betty saw marriage to him as a way to travel the world. They never loved each other, and she seemed to barely tolerate him later in life. Betty’s son was born, and it was determined to be best that a foster family raise him as Arthur was being sent to Spain. Once in Spain, Betty is still presumably sleeping with her husband, she has a lover, and is also sleeping with a priest who is helping her convert to Catholicism! That’s right. You can’t make this stuff up. Her lover is imprisoned, and she leaves her husband and a second child, Denise, to try and free her lover. Well, she frees a marquis along the way, and ends up being recruited as a spy for MI6.
Betty loved the intrigue. She would seduce men, become their lover, and elicit all manner of secrets. She was quite effective at her job, and even after some men found out they had been played and she didn’t love them, they were heartbroken that the relationship ended. They weren’t heartbroken over the fact that she didn’t love them and just used them. They would have waited the remainder of their lives for her.
Betty was credited with obtaining valuable ciphers, codes and secrets that helped the Allies immensely and changed the course of the war. Betty was never troubled by her actions, until later in life when she was facing her own mortality and examining her life. Like I said, she was meant to be a spy.
https://candysplanet.wordpress.com
melarie's review against another edition
3.0
While I enjoyed reading this book, and Betty Pack's life is undeniably fascinating, the writing style was too fanciful for me. For a nonfiction book, it crossed the line into make-believe very early on. I can never really accept "this person must have been thinking this at this horrible moment" type statements in history books and honestly it seemed like that was the whole basis of "The Last Goodnight." A fluff read, nothing more.
laurenn812's review against another edition
4.0
Like everyone else has said, Blum hasn't met an adjective he didn't like. This book probably would've been 25 pages shorter if he didn't have to use three descriptive words to describe every single noun. It's also written as a retelling of the way Betty told her life story to a friend, which was a weird angle, but overall it was a good book and a relatively quick read.