Book Review – The Accidental Further Adventures of the 100-Year-Old Man

Recently, I read Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared. I really enjoyed the book and laughed out loud a lot. So when I stumbled on a sequel, I naturally had to read it.

Perhaps it is a given that most sequels are bad. I suppose I felt that this would be just as good or close to that when I picked it up. Sadly, I was disappointed. It truly lacked so much of what the first book had.

The first book had many flashbacks to the main characters past experiences, while this book was set almost exclusively in the present. The first book contained some political things, but this book has a lot more of it.

I probably should give you the the Goodreads synopsis here:

It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they’re not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they could never have imagined that the captain of the ship would be harboring a suitcase full of contraband uranium, on a nuclear weapons mission for Kim Jong-un …

Soon Allan and Julius are at the center of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump. Things are about to get very complicated …

I listened to the audio book and the narrator was different from the first book. The fact that he voiced the old man in a very “throaty” voice was a bit annoying to me. His vocal interpretations of anyone in the book from the Koreas was very stereotypical sounding, while his Donald Trump was even more over the top than the real Trump.

I had hoped for a bit more adventure based on the synopsis, and to a degree there was some travel, but there was so much politics that I never really felt that I understood it all. As a matter of fact, when the book was over, I still wondered if that was the conclusion or if I was missing something.

All in all – a disappointing sequel that was best left unwritten. 2 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: The Edge of Sleep

Normally, I post what I would call a Book Recommendation, but I didn’t feel that this was one I would actually recommend. I will let you decide for yourself.

As many of you know, I work as a Sleep Technologist. When I saw the title of this book, I wondered if it might be something about sleep or dreams. When I saw that it was a novel, I read the synopsis. Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

What if the whole world fell asleep…and didn’t wake up again?

Dave Torres, a night watchman in a placid coastal town, knows all about sleep troubles. Since childhood, he’s battled terrors and nightmares. Sometimes those battles leak into his waking life, with disastrous consequences for those he loves. Now Dave lives alone and self-medicates to neutralize his dreams. It’s not much of a life, he knows.

The morning after Independence Day, Santa Mira, California, is so quiet Dave can hear the ocean from miles away. Traffic signals blink from red to green over empty intersections. Storefronts remain locked up tight. Every radio station whispers static.

And all over town, there are bodies, lying right where their owners left them. Dead right where they slept.

Dave―along with his ex-girlfriend, Katie, his best friend, Matteo, and Linda, a nurse he’s just met―struggle to unravel the mystery before sleep overtakes them all.

Except the answer to the mystery might lie in the one place that frightens Dave His twisted, unnerving dreams. Now Dave and his friends must straddle the liminal boundary between life and death as they fight to save everyone they’ve ever loved―and to keep their eyes open.

Because if any of them falls asleep now, it will be the last thing they ever do.

Let me start out by saying that this had so much potential. I really had high hopes for this one. I read it based on the synopsis and the hope that it would be more of a rush to solve the mystery. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was left scratching my head wondering what they heck I had just read.

After I finished, I had to know if I was the only one who felt that way. I was not. The reviews were mixed. People either loved it or hated it. I won’t say that I hated it, I was just really disappointed with the way it ended. It didn’t make any sense to me. It almost had one of those “Tales from the Crypt” or “Creepshow” kind of endings.

I was surprised to find that in describing this book, Goodreads labels it: Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller, Fantasy and Mystery. To a degree, I can see where it might fit into each of those categories. It did have a little of each, but it was almost someone was trying to make a bunch of genre readers happy. It misses the mark, though.

I found out as I prepared for this blog that the book was made into a TV series of the same name. On IMDB it states: This a drama in podcast format. It was announced in April 2021 that popular YouTuber Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier, is set to star in, and executive produce a TV series of the same name based on the podcast created by Chozen writers Jake Emanuel and Willie Block.

I don’t know want to knock the premise stemming from a podcast, because with the right stuff, it could be very entertaining. I don’t know how the show differs from the book, and I’m not sure I want to watch it to find out. If you would like to see for yourself, from what I can tell, the TV show can be watched on YouTube.

2 out of 5 stars from me.

Book Recommendation: The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip

“You have to be the friend people need while they are there with you, because it’s the only chance you’ll get.” – (The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip)

Sometimes the title of a book is enough to peak my interest. If you go back through some of the books I’ve read in the past year, you’ll find that a lot of the mysteries I’ve read had interesting titles. When I saw “The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip,” I truly believed this was going to be a murder mystery.

Even the synopsis made the think that there was some “mystery” to this story.

The Goodreads synopsis:

Aidyn Kelley is talented, ambitious, and ready for a more serious assignment than the fluff pieces she’s been getting as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. In her eagerness, she pushes too hard, earning herself the menial task of writing an obituary for an unremarkable woman who’s just entered hospice care. But there’s more to Clara Kip than meets the eye. The spirited septuagenarian may be dying, but she’s not quite ready to cash it in yet. Never one to shy away from an assignment herself, she can see that God brought the young reporter into her life for a reason. And if it’s a story Aidyn Kelley wants, that’s just what Mrs. Kip will give her—but she’s going to have to work for it.

Admittedly, the book was NOT what I expected. I gathered that from the first chapter or two. So how can I begin to tell you what it is about? This book is hard to describe, because I’ve not seen one quite like it before. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised. I felt that different is good in this case.

Before I go any further, I want to say that the book was Christian fiction. I was not aware of this when I began reading it. Not that it made a difference to me, as I am a Christian and was not offended in any way by the occasional quotes from Scripture, a character reading her Bible, or talk about God. It was a breath of fresh air to me.

That being said, I will be completely honest and warn that it may be a difficult read for someone who has recently lost a loved one. My mother passed from cancer in 2006, and there were things that happened in the book that took me back to those moments with her. It was a difficult book for me to read only because of that, but it was such an important part of the story.

While there are some incredibly sad parts in the book, they do not overshadow the wonderfully amazing happy and joyful parts. If I had to describe the book, I would say that it is unique, unusual, and extraordinary.

I was hooked from the very beginning. I listened to the audio version and it was one of those books that I may have to go and buy so I can have a physical copy. There were times that a character would say something and I wished I could highlight it to reread over and over. One reviewer said, “It’s the type of book that moves you to love more deeply and challenges you in your walk with God.” I would tend to agree.

At one point in the book, Mrs. Kip spots a leaf on a tree. She turns to the young reporter and says, “A leaf is a silent proverb. Did you ever consider that? When it buds on the tree, people rejoice. Throughout is prime, they love it for the shade it provides. But only when it reaches the end of its time on the tree does its brilliance come through. Sometimes yellow, sometimes orange, sometimes deep red. Dazzling in its artistry, like a drop of sunset you can see at all house of the day.” Clara (Mrs. Kip) smiled. “A leaf has the most extraordinary death. There is so much beauty to it.”

The above analogy really struck a chord with me. It was so very powerful. It was things like this that I could see myself highlighting and keeping.

I read some reviews of the books done by the blogging community and there were more than a few who said that they almost stopped reading the book for one reason or another. As they stuck with it, they were glad that they did and had high praise for the book. I was struck right from the get-go, even though it was not what I had expected the story to be.

5 out of 5 Stars from me.

Book Recommendation: The Secret Book of Flora Lea

Every once in a while a book on my “to read” list will sit on there a bit. Usually this is because I’ve read a negative review on Goodreads or maybe someone on one of the book related Facebook groups I belong to said they couldn’t finish it. I need to keep in mind that all book reviews (like music and humor) are subjective and that what I like, others may not and vice versa. That being said, I finally sat with The Secret Book of Flora Lea.

The thing that kept bringing me back to wanting to read it was the description listed on Goodreads and Amazon. There was something about the premise, the questions surrounding the mystery involved, and my curiosity about how it would end that kept peaking my interest.

Here is that Goodreads synopsis:

When a woman discovers a rare book that has connections to her past, long-held secrets about her missing sister and their childhood spent in the English countryside during World War II are revealed.

In the war-torn London of 1939, fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the kind Bridie Aberdeen and her teenage son, Harry, in a charming stone cottage along the River Thames, Hazel fills their days with walks and games to distract her young sister, including one that she creates for her sister and her sister alone—a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own.

But the unthinkable happens when young Flora suddenly vanishes while playing near the banks of the river. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, and she carries that guilt into adulthood as a private burden she feels she deserves.

Twenty years later, Hazel is in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore to a career at Sotheby’s. With a charming boyfriend and her elegantly timeworn Bloomsbury flat, Hazel’s future seems determined. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing an illustrated book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars . Hazel never told a soul about the imaginary world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years?

As Hazel embarks on a feverish quest, revisiting long-dormant relationships and bravely opening wounds from her past, her career and future hang in the balance. An astonishing twist ultimately reveals the truth in this transporting and refreshingly original novel about the bond between sisters, the complications of conflicted love, and the enduring magic of storytelling.

A tagline for the book reads, “A world war and a fairy tail collide…” and in a way, they do. However, the war is merely the setting and the catalyst that sets the story in motion.

I found that I enjoyed this book more than I anticipated I would. I really connected with the characters and found myself feeling for them. Without giving you spoilers, let me give an example. I could not imagine living in a place that was being threatened by enemy attack and having the government telling me that I needed to send my children away to stay with some other family until it was safe. That tore me up!

As the story progresses you pick up pieces along the way from the past and present to help solve the mystery. The make believe land of Whisperwood was a story that was only shared between the two sisters, so you cannot help but wonder how another author wrote about it in great detail. You wonder if the author is really the sister. You wonder if the sister told the author the story. Maybe the sister told somebody who told somebody else, etc… I wanted to know!

Not so much a spoiler here, but I will tell you that one of the things I loved about this book was that shortly before the book is over, the mystery is solved only to bring about a second mystery which brings you to the conclusion of the book.

I really enjoyed this book. I went back and read some of the negative reviews again and I laughed. I had finished the book and these reviews were saying what they didn’t like about the book and I thought, “that couldn’t be farther from the truth” and “that’s being so nitpicky.” Lesson learned – let others opinions stand alone and don’t let them influence you.

Am I saying that you will love the book? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I liked it and I feel that others, including you, might like it as well.

Book Recommendation – Oona Out of Order

Books are a lot like music. “If you like _____, then you might also like _____.” Thanks to some book blogger friends and the Goodreads app, there are always suggestions for books to read. I have read my share of time travel books, and this one was certainly different.

This is the first book I have read by this author. If I am being honest, I almost stopped after the first chapter. I had to remind myself that sometimes the things in that first chapter often are necessary to be the springboard for the rest of the book. That was the case here. It was all a little too – sappy teen love storyish for me. But I pressed on.

Before I explain, here the Goodreads synopsis:

A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order…

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.

That first chapter sets the stage for everything else that comes at you. From the moment Oona wakes up as a fifty-one year old, the chaos begins. Panic, fear, and the unknown face Oona as she navigates through the year, never really knowing if what she is experiencing is real. But when she leaps again at midnight on New Year’s Eve, she knows it is either real or a really bad nightmare.

What was interesting about this story was thinking about what it would be like if you had to live your life out of order. One year you would know people, while in other years they are strangers. In one year you have one set of friends, while in another a totally different set. In one year, you might witness a tragedy and in another it hasn’t happened yet. What could you do with the knowledge you have (or lack of it) as you lived from day to day knowing that you’d be off to another unknown year next? How would you live your life differently?

In the book, every so often a character will tell Oona, “No Spoilers,” and so I will not offer any here. There are many surprises and times I found myself yelling at the characters! LOL At the same time, I certainly took a few nuggets of wisdom away from this story.

3.5 out of 5 stars (only because I had some lingering questions at the end)

Book Recommendation: The Book of Lost Names

I am finding that there is no shortage of books set in World War II. What is really fascinating is that despite the number of them, they all seem to have a unique story line to them. That was the case with the book today.

This was a book I kept seeing come up on Goodreads as well as on a page of Historical Fiction recommendations. There were many rave reviews and positive reactions to it, so when it became available, I grabbed it.

Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

I really enjoyed this one. It was a good story that had things I figured out and a few surprises. As the story wrapped, I was left wanting to know more. Perhaps a sequel? I dunno.

4 out of 5 stars

Book Recommendation – Ward D

Since discovering the Libby App, my wife and I have been listening to almost all of our books in the car. She gets through hers faster than me, as she tends to be able to listen to them at work, too.

She will grab books that I already have on my Goodreads “Want to Read” list and there are ones that I have added to my list that she read first. The issue I have is that my “Want to Read” list grows faster than my “Read” list! Anyway, it is fun to discuss those books together after we have both read one from our lists.

Ward D has been on my list forever. It sounded really good. My wife read it and she said it blew her away. My son’s speech therapist read it, too, and she raved about the ending as well. I was waiting on a book that was still on hold and I looked to see if Ward D was available and it was, so I finally got around to reading it.

Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

Medical student Amy Brenner is spending the night on a locked psychiatric ward.

Amy has been dreading her evening working on Ward D, the hospital’s inpatient mental health unit. There are very specific reasons why she never wanted to do this required overnight rotation. Reasons nobody can ever find out.

And as the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced something terrible is happening within these tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger.

Amy’s worst nightmare was spending the night on Ward D. And now she might never escape.

This is the first book I read by Freida McFadden. It was a good psychological thriller. It definitely has you guessing and wondering through most of the book. There are plenty of characters in it that make you wonder who’s good and who’s bad. There are also characters that will creep you right out!

I was about 3 hours into the book (the audiobook was like 7 hours) and I came home and started telling my wife about where I was in the book and recapping what was happening. Maybe it is just that I watched a lot of Perry Mason and Columbo, but I tend to over think things. I find little things and I question them. So I blurted something out to my wife and she looked at me dumbfounded.

“I’m right, ain’t I?!” I said, proudly. She was pretty impressed that I figured part of the ending out, but “there is more to it and you’ll never guess that!” she told me. Well, she was right. There certainly was a few things I didn’t see coming and it wound up being ok. I will certainly be reading some more of her books.

I can easily see that if I was reading a physical copy of it, I’d be staying up late saying, “Ok, just one more chapter before I go to sleep!” 4 out of 5 stars.

Book Recommendation – Lou’s On First – Chris Costello

Growing up, one of the things that is forever etched in my mind was waking up on Sunday mornings and Abbott and Costello movies would be playing on Channel 7 (WXYZ/Detroit). It was on those Sunday mornings that I was introduced to classic films like Buck Privates, Who Done It?, Africa Screams, The Naughty Nineties, and Hold That Ghost. Of course I loved all the Abbott and Costello “meet” pictures, too (Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and more)!

It wasn’t long after I first discovered them that I found one of the other stations played the Abbott and Costello cartoons after school. Even as a child, I could tell that Bud Abbott’s voice was his, and that someone else was voicing Lou Costello. I had no idea at the time that this cartoon was made in the late 60’s and that Lou had passed away in 1959.

In fact, I learned this week that there were a whole lot of things I didn’t know about him! I just finished a truly wonderful book about him, written by his youngest daughter, Chris Costello. A few years back, we became Facebook friends and she had posted that the audio version of her book was now available. I searched for it and got it to listen to on my drive to and from work.

I have had this book for sometime in printed form. It was on my “To Read” shelf for way too long. With all that I had going on in life, I found it difficult to actually sit and read for very long. So it sat on the shelf. When I recently discovered some of the audiobook platforms, I began to go back and search for audio versions of books on that shelf. When Chris said it was available, I was ecstatic.

Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

This intimate portrait of Lou Costello (1906-1959) offers a rare look at one of the most talented comedians of all time. Starting in the 1930s, Costello attained enormous fame touring the burlesque circuits with straight man Bud Abbott (1895-1974). Their live skits (including “Who’s on First?”), radio programs, and films made comic history. Behind the scenes, however, Costello faced numerous a bout with rheumatic fever that left him bedridden for months, the drowning death of his young son, and constant haggles with Universal Studios over its reluctance to adequately finance productions of Abbott and Costello films. Lou’s on First goes beyond Costello’s clownish persona to explore his Pagliacci, the private demons behind the happy public face, the heartbreaking moments in an otherwise storybook marriage, the business ventures soured by unscrupulous managers, and the true nature of the breakup of his twenty-one-year partnership with Bud Abbott.

I heard one comedian say, “The comedy community has a lot of trauma and pain.” A look at comedians throughout history will certainly show this to be true. Lou Costello had his share of tragedy and health problems.

Chris Costello was around 10 or 11 years old when her father died. She shares her memories of her dad, as well as stories and memories from those who knew him. As I listened to Chris share these stories, I learned about her father’s kindness to just about everyone he met that was in need. I learned that he truly did pay for Dean Martin’s nose job (and was sad to hear that he never really came around after that). I learned about the gambling that went on while making movies with Bud Abbott. I learned on the tragic death of his son and what that event did to Lou and his family. It was such an enlightening book.

I never really knew what brought the duo to their ultimate split. It was interesting to be able to know what was going on during the filming of certain movies as Bud and Lou’s partnership got close to an end. They were certainly professionals, because I would have never known that they were on the outs while some of those films were being made. They never looked like they were at odds with each other.

There are pros and cons to audiobooks. The pros of this one was that there are occasional audio clips from Bud and Lou and even audio from home movies. I don’t care how many times I hear Who’s on First – it will NEVER NOT be funny! It is a masterpiece!

This book made me laugh and made me cry. It is the perfect love letter to a comedic legend from his daughter. The “bad boy” from Paterson, NJ touched many lives, and his memory lives on there with a beautiful statue and memorial park.

Thank you, Chris Costello, for sharing these stories about your dad with me and the world.

I highly recommend this book to fans of Abbott and Costello! 5 stars!

For those who want to listen to the audio book, you can find it on all the major audio book platforms. You can also order through Chris the limited-edition 10-CD Collection with 8-pg “Costello Family Photo Album” which she will gladly autograph. You won’t find this set on Amazon or elsewhere as she self-funded this collection. For more info or to order email: accollectibles@aol.com

Book Recommendation – End of Story by AJ Finn

As you know, I love a good mystery. I also love a mystery with a great “I didn’t see that coming” moment. My latest read had both, and when the “I didn’t see that coming moment” came I was truly floored.

Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.”

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective fever.”

“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.”

Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenaged son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting.

Online reviews of the book are mixed. I had to laugh when one complained that it had 100 chapters. Some of the chapters were short, so I wonder why that reviewer even mentioned it!

The book had me asking questions throughout the read. Was it him? Was it her? Do they know more than they are saying? Why are they acting that way? Even in the slower moments there were things that made me think. When it all falls into place, all of those questions had answers.

I give this 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Let me know if you check it out.

Book Recommendation – Under The Paper Moon

A few weeks back, I was a lucky winner of a Goodreads Giveaway. I received Under The Paper Moon by Shaina Steinberg and I have just finished it.

My first thought when I saw the cover was “Film Noir.” It had that 1940’s look about it and after reading the synopsis, I was excited to read it:

Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets The Thin Man ’s Nick and Nora Charles in this intrigue-filled debut from film and television writer Shaina Steinberg, as two former spies who shared more than just missions during WWII reunite in 1948 Los Angeles. Can they let go of heartbreak long enough to team up for one last operation?

It’s 1942, and as far as her father knows, Evelyn Bishop, heiress to an aeronautics fortune, is working as a translator in London. In truth, Evelyn—daring, beautiful, and as adept with a rifle as she is in five languages—has joined the Office of Strategic Services as a spy. Her goal is to find her brother, who is being held as a POW in a Nazi labor camp. Through one high-risk mission after another she is paired with the reckless and rebellious Nick Gallagher, growing ever close to him until the war’s end brings with it an act of deep betrayal.

Six years later, Evelyn is back home in Los Angeles, working as a private investigator. The war was supposed to change everything, yet Evelyn, contemplating marriage to her childhood sweetheart, feels stifled by convention. Then the suspected cheating husband she’s tailing is murdered, and suddenly Evelyn is back in Nick’s orbit again.

Teaming up for a final mission, Evelyn and Nick begin to uncover the true nature of her case— and realize that the war has followed them home. For beyond the public horrors waged by nations there are countless secret, desperate acts that still reverberate on both continents, and threaten everything Evelyn holds dear…

It really did have that “Film Noir” feel to it at times and wasn’t really a bad read. I enjoyed how the author gave us a look at the present and some events in the past that helped to move the story line and the mystery along. It all fits together by the end.

Honestly, whenever I read a spy novel set in this period of time, it is hard for me to not read the dialogue like something out of a movie. That being said, I always read the character of Nick like a Humphrey Bogart sounding guy. Evelyn was Veronica Lake-ish to me. The character, Katie, I read like an annoying school girl because that what she reminded me of.

The story took a minute to get going, but when someone is killed it begins to move at a pretty decent pace. There were some twists in the story that I didn’t see coming and I probably would have rated it a bit higher if I hadn’t been put off by some “over the top” and almost unbelievable things that happen toward the climax of the story. That was the only downfall to the story for me.

Over all, it was a nice Historical Fiction read. The overall rating on Goodreads is 4 stars, I gave it 3.5 stars.

Thanks to the folks at Kensington Publishing for choosing me as a winner on Goodreads and sending me a copy.

#underthepapermoon, #betweenthechapters