Goodreads Rating: 4.03 stars

Amazon Rating: 4.4 stars

Amazon Summary:

State intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the CIA’s most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers, trained in their respective spy schools, collide in a charged atmosphere of tradecraft, deception, and, inevitably, a forbidden spiral of carnal attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America’s most valuable mole in Moscow.

Seeking revenge against her soulless masters, Dominika begins a fateful double life, recruited by the CIA to ferret out a high-level traitor in Washington; hunt down a Russian illegal buried deep in the US military and, against all odds, to return to Moscow as the new-generation penetration of Putin’s intelligence service. Dominika and Nathaniel’s impossible love affair and twisted spy game come to a deadly conclusion in the shocking climax of this electrifying, up-to-the-minute spy thriller.

My Thoughts:

I’ve never read a spy/espionage book before and this probably wasn’t the best one to start with. It took me an unnecessarily long time to keep all the names and characters straight. A lot of the spy tactics and rationales went over my head. It was just a lot of information to take in and my brain could not handle it.

Nate and Dominika’s relationship was fantastic in this book. It wasn’t a typical romance and the whole ending of it was completely ambiguous. Their handler/asset interactions were cute and a haven for them in a very tough job. I really enjoyed the scenes they had together.

Overall, I liked the book, but I’m not going to continue with the series. I’m just not interested in continuing—especially with the way this book ended. I am interested in seeing the movie though, and I’ll get around to watching it eventually.