Play Book Tag discussion

I keep losing my wifi, so I'm writing this in stages...

Wow, I'm glad I finally read this book. It's so well constructed. I wonder if Kate Quinn is partly to blame for the huge trend in dual timeline novels. She did it so well, but there are a lot of copycats.

While the book takes place in two time periods, they are glued together by one of the main characters, Eve, a female espionage agent who appears in both timelines. We see her at the very beginning of her career during World War I, and we see her again in 1947 through the eyes of Charlie, a 19 year American girl. Charlie is in Europe with her mother to obtain a "procedure," but she is intent on finding her French cousin who disappeared during WWII. Charlie gets Eve's name as a potential contact, and she finds a drunk angry old woman who threatens to shoot her. They eventually end up on a road trip with along with a Scottish man, on different quests.

One thing I appreciated about this book is that all the characters are wonderfully flawed. Neither woman is described as beautiful with unusually gorgeous green eyes. (I really hate when authors do that.) All three of the main characters have strikes against them and to me it makes them so much more interesting than if they were practically perfect in every way. Part of the mystery was in discovering their whole back stories.

I've read a lot of WWII books, so certain things were expected, but the story - and characters - had more facets than I expected, and it kept me interested the entire time. I don't think it needed to be quite as long as it was, but I enjoyed it.

It helps to know that in real life - women in unconventional roles were essential to winning WWII. and female spy networks were especially effective. This was a great choice for the adventure tag.

I liked this one too. Nice review!

I really loved this one!

I gave this one 5 stars. However, when I moved on with her books, I was very disappointed.

Joanne wrote: "I gave this one 5 stars. However, when I moved on with her books, I was very disappointed."

I’ve been a little stingier with my 5’s lately. I’m pretty sure I gave Rose Code 5 stars, but I can’t even remember it now. I find that with many authors, my favorite book is the first one I read.

This is my favourite of her books for sure. I read both ‘The Huntress’ and ‘The Diamond Eye’ for Subdue recently and enjoyed both a lot, especially The Huntress - just not quite up to this one