AUTHOR: Elizabeth Kiem
PUBLISHED: August 2013
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Mystery, Historical Fiction (still not comfortable with the idea of a book that starts literally the same month I was born, being categorized as historical fiction)
PREMISE: A girl's life is torn upside down when her mother gets caught up in state secrets in Russia during the Cold War.
MY REVIEW: I think I liked the idea of this novel more then the actual execution of it. Come on a spy novel in the Cold War era? Awesome, right? To be sure, the author did do great research into this. I did honestly feel like this was the eighties and she captured the era and feel of the story well.
Unfortunately she takes far too much time to get to the meat of the story so I spent a large part of this novel being really bored. I'm sorry, but Marina's personal life was simply not as interesting as the stuff going on with state secrets and only like a third of the novel was spent devoted to that. The rest was mostly teen drama in a eighties setting. Which, fine, but when you promise me a great mystery and then don't get to the mystery till over half way through...I get irritated.
So, it was a good idea, it just needed better execution and less wandering plot. I do think this author has potential though, because it was interesting. She just needs to work on focusing her plot.
WHO SHOULD READ: Historical fiction fans, those interested in the eighties
MY RATING: Three out of Five leg warmers
No comments:
Post a Comment