Red Sparrow - Jason Matthews

Red Sparrow is book 1 of a trilogy of espionage thrillers from Jason Matthews and I can't wait to read the next two.  This is my first spy thriller novel and I was a little iffy about it at first, but by the end I was completely hooked.  This novel follows threads from the point of view of both the American CIA and Russian SVR.  The two main characters are the American Nate Nash and Russian Dominika Egorova and we follow them as they work through their respective agencies and engage in espionage activities. When Dominika is assigned to Nate to learn the identity of the mole inside the Russian government, the cat and mouse games begin.

This is my first spy novel that I've read, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but I liked the overall tone and mood of the story.  I've never worked as a spy, but the story did feel authentic and Matthews is described as a veteran CIA officer.  It didn't feel super overdone or commercialized and I could even see how some readers would find it a bit slow and boring compared to something like the Mission Impossible movies.  I enjoyed the explanation of all the behind the scenes stuff from convincing someone to spy against their country to the vetting process to the technology used to transmit messages.  These details were the real flavor of the book for me and I hope this continues in the later books in the series.

 As much as I loved the relationship between Dominika and Nate (and I did really like them together), I was surprised how much I liked the parts of the book where they were separate.  I think Matthews did a fantastic job at building these webs of government on both sides and there were whole chapters where the two main characters weren't on screen.  This enhanced the overall cast as more than just stereotypes and gave the characters depth.  It also enhanced the danger and tension when the reader knows things that the two main characters don't and all the little mentions and breadcrumbs that Matthews lays out during the novel really pay off.

In general, I'm a character-driven reader.  I love stories with complex and rich characters even if the plot is just meh.  This novel, in my opinion, is a little light on the action, but very heavy in character and Dominika was my favorite character by far.  She does start off as a bit of the stereotypical Russian where she is cold and calculating and has that dry sense of Soviet humor where 'everything is just kind of bad all the time but that's just the way things are so no use complaining'.  But through her backstory and actions going forward, we see how she has built walls around her and we get glimpses into how she really feels.  The one part about her character that I wasn't convinced of was her synesthesia.  It makes sense in her backstory where she can see music in colors in the air and it helps her be a very good ballerina.  However, her synesthesia being used as a plot device where she can see a character's mood or intentions as a cloud above their head was a bit far for me and I couldn't suspend my disbelief that far.  If she could only see the colors when someone was talking, sure, but there were numerous times when she would walk into the room and no one was talking and she'd think about the purple cloud over one person and the yellow cloud over another. 

My least favorite part of this novel was the first 10 chapters, which sounds bad, and I almost put the book down.  However, after the first 10 chapters, the story really kicked into gear for me and I was in.  The novel starts off with Nate meeting the CIA mole in Moscow and almost getting caught and then it felt like Matthews slammed on the breaks and we had to sit around in traffic for a while before the story picked back up.  The first 10 chapters were backstory for the two main characters and while that backstory is important to the plot going forward so the reader understands the character motivations, I wish it was worked in throughout the main narrative and not dumped in the beginning. I also think part of my issue with these backstory chapters was the fact that I was listening to the audiobook and the narrator was a bit dry.  Overall, I felt this narration style fit the tone of the novel which was very bureaucratic at times, but going so long without any high action sequences really made it feel like a drag.  At one point, when Dominika was in sparrow school, I remarked to my partner that this was the unsexiest sexy spy book ever.  There are a number of scenes with explicit sex in this book, just as an FYI. 

 

 

 

434 pages

Bit of a slow start, but a very down to earth espionage thriller with great characters all around.  The details of the different options from both sides really made it feel like a cat and mouse game and the reader was just waiting to see who would get caught.

The book was made into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence that has a current rating of 45% on Rotten Tomatoes.