Book Check-In 7/5/20

My last check in was in the middle of the week, so I’ve only read 1 book since then. I finished reading The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.

I really liked this book! I’m not usually super into books about the World Wars, but this one was awesome! It’s historical fiction, somewhat based in truth. It brings together two women. The first is a young American in a bad situation who’s looking for her cousin who disappeared during WWII. She meets the second woman, who was a spy during WWI, as a possible lead to find her cousin. The story switches between the 40s, the two women journeying together to find the cousin, and the past, when the second woman was a spy. It goes through her experiences and gives insight into their present. The old enemies from her past seem to have touched the life of the missing cousin, and so she has to work through her painful past to help. It’s really fantastic, at points I couldn’t put it down because it was so thrilling. I kept saying “just one more chapter” and then would get to the end of the next chapter and need to repeat it.

I was really excited because at the end, there was an afterward explaining that some of the members of the spy network were real historical figures, and some of the spy techniques described in the book were ones those women had actually used. I thought it was interesting, because I had never heard much about spies in WWI. The Alice Network was a real network of spies led by a women whose alias was Alice Dubois and was one of the most successful spy networks of the war! I had heard of using women as spies in other wars because women are often overlooked, but I thought it was really cool how she was worked into the novel. Even if you don’t read the book, you should look her up, she was awesome.

I’m still working on reading Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez, and have started one new book, The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah.

As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.