Thursday, June 11, 2020

83. The Huntress

The Huntress. Kate Quinn. 2019. 560 pages. [Source: Library] [World War II]

First sentence: She was not used to being hunted.

Premise/plot: Set mostly in 1950 with many, many flashbacks to the war years, The Huntress is about a team of Nazi hunters pursuing an elusive target: a mistress-turned-murderer. They've nicknamed her "The Huntress."

It is told from three perspectives: Ian Graham, Nina Markova (his wife and the only known eye-witness/survivor who can identify her), and Jordan McBride (a young woman recently graduated from high school).

Jordan McBride is skeptical about her father's new girlfriend. She's super-secretive and refuses to talk about her past. On their wedding day, Jordan discovers an Iron Cross hidden within her bouquet. That raises her skepticism to HIGH levels of concern. Is her new stepmother a Nazi?

Ian, Tony, and Nina, meanwhile, are hunting Europe looking for clues no matter how small that might lead them to where The Huntress is now. One lead takes them to America, to Boston.

My thoughts: My expectations were high. I was hoping for an intense thriller-ish read with well-developed characters and plenty of action and suspense. I was disappointed. Perhaps because of the choice of narrators the Huntress' identity seemed super-super-super-super obvious. And the only "mystery" was how long it would take the characters to piece together the clues. But my biggest issue was my complete almost total disconnect from the characters. The only characters I remotely cared about weren't narrators (Tony and Ruth). I just didn't care, end of story. It was a dull story that promised much and didn't deliver.

I do try to keep my reads somewhat on the cleaner side. This one had a LOT of language in it, and the writing just didn't compensate enough for that to make it worth it for me. If the story had been more compelling, the characters more developed, with more tension and intensity...then perhaps I wouldn't have bothered much with all the cursing. 

© 2020 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

2 comments:

Lark said...

I have this one sitting on my TBR pile at home; I got it from a blogging friend, but haven't been able to make myself read it yet. Now I want to even less. :)

AnneKristy said...

I too have this book in my TBR pile. I may still try and read it.