The Huntress by Kate Quinn opens in 1950 Boston where Jordan McBride must contend with her mysterious new step-mother, Anna. Jordan’s love of and talent for photography expose a darker side of Anna, causing Jordan to try to dig deeper into Anna’s cloaked past. Meanwhile in Vienna, English journalist Ian Graham and his associate Tony are still hunting Nazi war criminals. One Lorelei Vogt, known as The Huntress, is on their list and is suspected to have fled to the US. And then there’s Nina, the former Soviet Night Witch turned deserter who married Ian during the war as a way to safely immigrate to England.

Nina was perhaps the most engaging and interesting part of this story. As The Huntress is told in a non-linear fashion, we get flashback chapters of Nina before and during the war; her pilot training, the forming of the Night Witch bomber squadron, Nina’s relationship with fellow pilot Yelena, and her ultimate defection from Soviet Russia after her father speaks ill of the government. Nina’s personality and charm leap off the pages, leaving the other characters muted in her wake. For example, the 1950 chapters with Jordan in Boston seemed modern, out of place, and slightly disjointed from the rest of the story.

While The Huntress was an entertaining read, I kept wanting to know more of Lorelei Vogt’s backstory and motivation. We get glimpses via the clues the characters uncover, but we never really get a real motivation or reason from The Huntress herself, which makes her kind of flat and unconvincing with no real arc.

While The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (another WWII story) is one of my favorites, The Huntress didn’t quite measure up to the emotional intensity and depth of that book. I would have rather liked an entire book about the Night Witches!