It actually felt like summer is on the way this weekend, but alas, more rain and cooler temperatures are in the forecast for the coming week. *sigh* So I’ll write this short post then get outside to enjoy as much of this lovely day as possible.
I finished The Alice Network on Friday and it was great! Despite the rather predictable ending, it held many surprises and gave me a sense that I was really learning something about the roles and functions of spies during and between the wars. I preferred the “Eve” sections over the “Charlie” sections, but I can see why there had to be both to make the structure work. In the "Afterward", Quinn explains how some of the situations in the book reflected situations women and men faced during this time, giving us historical context. I would recommend it for any book club, and I think both male and female readers would appreciate and enjoy this novel.
And I finished a so-so audiobook last week, The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian. I have never read anything by this author before, but the premise of this mystery sounded intriguing so I thought I’d give it a try. Cassie Boden has been a flight attendant for many years, and this flight to Dubai should be no different from the hundreds of others she’d been on before. She follows her usual pattern of drinking too much and hooking up with a man for a “casual encounter” in his hotel room, after which she plans to go back to her own hotel room to get some sleep before her return flight in the morning. But this time, after getting “black-out” drunk, she wakes up next to a dead man, his throat slashed and his blood soaking into the mattress. Did she do it? She can’t be 100% sure that she’s not guilty of murder, so she flees the scene, erasing as much evidence as she can of her presence in the room. Over the rest of the novel, she tries to avoid being charged with the murder, while also trying to find out who did it. It was interesting enough to keep me listening to the end, but I couldn’t really relate to Cassie at all, nor did the details of the story as it unfolded seem credible. And I was reluctant to download this novel because it had multiple narrators, something I usually dislike. I’m not quite sure why they did that for this book, as I don’t think it enhanced the listening experience at all; rather, I found that it was quite jarring whenever a different narrator took over, making the story seem disjointed. Anyway, it was OK, but certainly not great, and based on this experience, I doubt I’ll seek out other books by this author.
That’s all for today. Get outside and enjoy the sunny day before the rain starts!
Bye for now…Julie
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