historical fiction
Mila, a young, single mother in pre-WWII Russia decides to
leave her research and her library to fight for her country against
Hitler’s Germans. She has taken lessons
in riflery and joins the Red Army to use her sniper skills in the war. She ends up garnering over 300 kills and widespread respect. After
her sacrifices and hardships, will she ever find happiness?
I’m really glad to have learned about, Lyudmila Pavlichenko,
who actually was a Russian sharpshooter during WWII. She was inspirational and
heroic. Perhaps because of her youth, she did not feel compelled to stay with
her son when she left for war. Leaving her son behind with her
parents, knowing she might not return, was a big decision which was not sufficiently
explored/explained in the novel. Otherwise, Kate Quinn did an amazing job with
her research, as usual.
Despite the fact that I admired Mila, I felt that this novel
wasn’t as good as some of Quinn’s other novels. It’s about one woman’s drive
for perfection in order to take control of her life. But the only real driving questions in her story were whether Mila would live to return to her son and whether she would ever be
satisfied after she had upended her own life by joining the army. Mostly, I kept reading because
I’ve enjoyed a few of Quinn’s other novels and was hoping it would get
better. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t
ever boring. It was a good book. It just didn’t appeal to me as much
as other novels she’s written. Plus, much of Mila’s story took place on the
battlefield and I never love reading about battles.
Saskia Maarleveld narrated the audiobook and she was
terrific, as usual. Great voice acting,
a fantastic vocal repertoire including male voices and multiple accents, not to
mention what sounded like terrific Russian name and word pronunciations. A+!
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