Single Malt, and Cask Strength (Agents Irish and Whiskey #1 and #2), Layla Rayne

The summer of reading tons of romance novels and Dunnett continues! I liked the first book so much! I love a romance novel that's also action-adventure, and this has lots of mystery and clues and sudden reveals of bad guys. Both protagonists were well-drawn and complex, and it made sense for them to want each other, and to have serious challenges getting together. Aidan's husband was killed mysteriously eight months earlier, and he's not over it yet. Jaime's handsome and charming and a little famous, and being in a relationship will be public and uncomfortable. As I finished this book I said out loud to myself, "How many of these are there? I'm going to read ALL of them."

There is a little telling instead of showing in the first couple of chapters, and a few too many uses of nicknames (something that bugs me a lot because romances seem to rely so heavily on it), but overall I liked this a lot, and I immediately bought the sequel, so...

I liked the second one even more. There are amazing tropes here. Aidan and Jaime have gotten together, but promised to keep it casual (and Aiden is sleeping with a bunch of other dudes, to remind himself not to get too attached to Jaime, which is breaking Jaime's heart a little). Jaime has to go undercover as himself; he was previously a basketball player, and the FBI asks him to be himself, as a coach, to bust an online gambling ring. Jaime misses his old life and of course runs into the ex-boyfriend who broke his heart, while Aidan is pretending to cozy up to a suspect. The pining is magnificent, as are the dark secrets. 

When I got to the end I immediately pre-ordered the third one, which luckily is coming out next month. This is just what I wanted on my summer vacation. 

Grade: B 

#59 and #60 in 2017

Dangerous Ground (#1-6), Josh Lanyon

These books are aggressively fine. I couldn't keep straight which of the two heroes was which, except one of them kept getting shot and nearly murdered and the other one was mad about it. And one of them went to France and the other was mad about it. I liked them -- I mean, I read all six. But I would be lying if I said I remembered the plots very well. There's a pregnant woman they arrest, there's a bomb in catacombs in Paris, there's a bottle of alcohol with a snake in it... Anyway, I liked them, but they're all super short, and none of them really stuck with me.

Grade: Eh. B to C depending on the book.
#28-33 in 2017

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, Ben Macintyre

Then I took like, 2 weeks off from reading because I'm on vacation and it's the Olympics, whoops. Also, in my defense, this book is non-fiction, and it took me a while to get going with it.

But once I did, my god. someone recommended this to me as vacation reading and I strongly agree. If you like thrillers or spy movies you should take this book to a beach and read the whole thing in a couple of days, under an umbrella with a drink in hand. It's the true-life story of the Russia mole inside MI6 in the UK during WWII and the early Cold War, the man who was simultaneously reporting everything to the Kremlin and running the anti-Soviet counterspy division. The number of ways he was almost turned in, the way he totally duped people, the close calls -- all of these things would seem insane if this were a movie, but they all really happened.

Halfway through the book MI5 begin to suspect him, but that is only halfway through the book! Things continue to escalate in ways that should be outlandish, and are totally real. You will find yourself turning to whomever is sitting closest to you and shouting, "AND THEN, YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS PART, AND THEN--"

If I had a criticism, I would have liked to have the parts about James Angleton and the CIA more fleshed out, but otherwise, this was a literal page turner. ...except I read it on a kindle, so I guess it was a literal virtual page turner.

Grade: A
#66 in 2016