Author: Chris Pavone
Pages: 448
Published: March 8, 2016
Goodreads
A pulse-racing international thriller from the New York Timesbestselling author of The Expats and The Accident
It’s 3:00am. Do you know where your husband is?
Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Soon Will’s bad choices—and dark secrets—take him across Europe, from a chateau in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion, from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs of Iceland. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications—and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.
It’s 3:00am. Your husband has just become a spy.
It’s 3:00am. Do you know where your husband is?
Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Soon Will’s bad choices—and dark secrets—take him across Europe, from a chateau in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion, from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs of Iceland. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications—and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.
It’s 3:00am. Your husband has just become a spy.
Why the DNF?
[Thank you so much to Crown Publishing for giving me this eARC for an honest review.]
My loves, it's happened again. I had to DNF yet another book. I think that's twice within two months oh boy. Last time I talked about the reason being technical. I couldn't read the font they used for part of the book so it fell flat for me. This time however, it was the writing and the plot. There was just so much confusion and it was really hard to see what kind of direction this novel was trying to go into.
Before I get into that though, I made a mistake when putting this on my TBR. This book has 0% to do with time travel. I honestly don't know where that came from and I don't know why I kept thinking that until I went back to put this in my shelves. It was really weird. Anywhoodles, back to the review.
When I started the book, it started out alright. It kind of started with a scene that was obviously somewhere in the middle of the story and so it did the typical non-linear story telling model of going back to where it all began which was fine. I actually love that kind of writing.
Then, however, it got really confusing. There's a lot of pages describing Will's house and travels and his marriage falling apart--back story for the character I guess. That's cool. But then he goes to do an assignment in Paris and... nothing happens. It's actually quite mundane. There's a couple of pages of intrigue where there's a secret door and secret files being passed around, but that's about it. It gave me the smallest tease to keep reading. So I did. Yet, I still got... nothing.
This happened a couple of more times to where I was just frankly bored. I didn't know whether this "spy" stuff was supposed to be a huge part of the novel. It was so short that it was obviously there for a reason, but also short enough that I was confused as to where it fit with the entire story. I only got 12% into this book, loves. It didn't do anything to capture my interest and attention immediately. Perhaps I'm used to reading YA novels that just kind of jump into the story, but I've also read adult fiction novels that did the same so I don't know.
I've read some really great reviews for this so I think I may the be the Black sheep about this book. It just didn't click with me, but I'm still exploring adult fiction so I might go back to this book some day.
