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A review by bethpeninger
Need to Know by Karen Cleveland
3.0
Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.
If you've watched The Americans then this storyline will ring familiar. Not the same but familiar.
Vivian Miller is a wife, mom, and CIA CI analyst working on Russian sleeper cells. Her life is very full and very busy. She's created an algorithm at work to track down Russian handlers and their sleepers. It works great and she finds herself staring into the face of someone she knows. Someone who happens to be the father of her four children. There's no way she is married to a Russian operative and hasn't caught on by now. There's just no way...or is there? What follows this revelation is a downward spiral for Vivian as she grapples with the truth, or reality, of her life and what the next steps look like. All along the way the thing she keeps coming back to is trusting her gut, her instincts. Can she? Should she? In the end, for better or worse she's got to.
I got done with the book and felt slightly sick. Just like I felt while watching The Americans. All of this spying and subterfuge. I could never do it and I don't understand people who do. I read this book pretty fast, Cleveland wrote a story that grabbed my attention and kept me wanting to get to the next chapter so I could find out what would happen next. Cleveland, in her former life, was a CIA CI analyst so she writes from experience as far as the job goes. So if Cleveland is crafting fiction stories from her very real work once-upon-a-time I guess that means there is still, in this day and age, all this spy crap going on in countries all over the world? It just seems so infantile. Anyway. This was a good read. I liked it. I might read other Cleveland titles in the future.
If you've watched The Americans then this storyline will ring familiar. Not the same but familiar.
Vivian Miller is a wife, mom, and CIA CI analyst working on Russian sleeper cells. Her life is very full and very busy. She's created an algorithm at work to track down Russian handlers and their sleepers. It works great and she finds herself staring into the face of someone she knows. Someone who happens to be the father of her four children. There's no way she is married to a Russian operative and hasn't caught on by now. There's just no way...or is there? What follows this revelation is a downward spiral for Vivian as she grapples with the truth, or reality, of her life and what the next steps look like. All along the way the thing she keeps coming back to is trusting her gut, her instincts. Can she? Should she? In the end, for better or worse she's got to.
I got done with the book and felt slightly sick. Just like I felt while watching The Americans. All of this spying and subterfuge. I could never do it and I don't understand people who do. I read this book pretty fast, Cleveland wrote a story that grabbed my attention and kept me wanting to get to the next chapter so I could find out what would happen next. Cleveland, in her former life, was a CIA CI analyst so she writes from experience as far as the job goes. So if Cleveland is crafting fiction stories from her very real work once-upon-a-time I guess that means there is still, in this day and age, all this spy crap going on in countries all over the world? It just seems so infantile. Anyway. This was a good read. I liked it. I might read other Cleveland titles in the future.