By Kelly Bridgewater
A betrayal at the highest level risks
the lives of two courageous female spies: MI6’s best Soviet spy and the CIA’s
newest Moscow recruit. As the KGB closes in, a compromise must be struck if
either woman hopes to survive.
Vienna,
1954
After losing everyone she loves in
the final days of World War II, Ingrid Bauer agrees to a hasty marriage with a
gentle Soviet embassy worker and follows him home to Moscow. But nothing deep
within the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime is what it seems, including her
new husband, whom Ingrid suspects works for the KGB. Upon her daughter’s birth,
Ingrid risks everything and reaches out in hope to the one country she
understands and trusts—Britain, the country of her mother’s birth—and starts
passing along intelligence to MI6, navigating a world of secrets and lies,
light and shadow.
Washington, DC, 1980
Part of the Foreign Studies
Initiative, Anya Kadinova finishes her degree at Georgetown University and
boards her flight home to Moscow, leaving behind the man she loves and a
country she’s grown to respect. Though raised by dedicated and loyal Soviet
parents, Anya soon questions an increasingly oppressive and paranoid Soviet
regime at the height of the Cold War. When the KGB murders her best friend, Anya
picks sides and contacts the CIA. Working in a military research lab, Anya
passes along Soviet military plans and schematics in an effort to end the 1980s
arms race.
Alternating points of view keep
readers on their toes as the past catches up to the present when an
unprecedented act of treachery in 1985 threatens all undercover agents
operating within the Soviet Union, and both Ingrid and Anya find themselves in
a race for their lives against time and the KGB.
My Thoughts:
A Shadow of Moscow
by Katherine Reay has a synopsis of a Cold War Spy Novel. I enjoy a good spy
novel, especially during World War II. However, Reay’s novel does have those
elements of a Russian spy with hints of the Nazi Regime that started during
World War II. Actually the novel does have a timeline of 1944 with the Nazi’s
in it. Some issues with the writing are a lot of telling, not showing. I feel
like I was being told a lot of information in information dumps throughout the
first 50 percent of the novel. There was a little bit of movement sprinkled in
between, but nothing really that important to the idea of the plot. Ingrid, as
a character, was really flat. She seemed to have no personality and just moved
through the directions and a little bit of discussion. Anya, on the other hand,
may be a little more developed, but she seems a little boring too. Both characters
are worried about their heritage, but I do not sense a sense of urgency in both
characters. If I had the KGB coming after me for something that mother had done
in the past, I believe I would be a little more scared. Anya did not have that
feeling. Since this a split-time story, I wanted to read more like a story.
Overall, A Shadow of Moscow by Katherine Reay did not really capture my
attention. With the synopsis, it could have been an interesting story, but I
felt like Reay did not deliver what she promised.
I received a complimentary copy of The
Shadow of Moscow by Katherine Reay from Harper Muse Publishing, but the
opinions stated are all my own.
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Purchase A Shadow of Moscow
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