Need to Know

This feels like an amateurish version of a young adult book. The target market might even be teenagers. If you have young children and love all things babies and weddings, then you might enjoy this story, which adds a mild amount of espionage to it—and I do stress the word ‘mild’. The story is fifty percent back story about a young couple’s wedding and young babies being born and fifty percent story about how a young CIA woman finds out her computer tech husband is a Russian spy and that their entire ten-year marriage has been a lie because she was targeted from the day they met. To be a CIA agent who is trained to detect facial cues when people lie, she is completely inept. She continues to believe everything her husband tells her no matter how many lies he tells her. She just found out their entire marriage is a sham, and yet she continues to believe everything he says. And instead of extracting information out of him, she gives him all the information he requests to pass on to his Russian handler. Senseless. And on top of everything, she betrays her country. The CIA mole’s identity was evident from the start. I have no idea why this has so many four and five star reviews elsewhere. If this is the normal quality of our CIA agents, then our country is in real trouble. I give it two stars simply because the structuring is okay and someone into young adult books might enjoy it.

From the first page, this book pulled us in. It’s one of the best mystery/suspense books we’ve read in a long time. Warning: do NOT read the last page until you come to it. And be prepared to ignore your responsibilities as you read this book.