The Book Spy

 Today's review will be about The Book Spy by Alan Hlad. This book is a standalone novel about world war 2 and how librarians had a impact on the war. Publication date is January 24, 2023. 

A little about the book; 

in 1942 Maria Alves wanted to serve her country and honor her mother who was a photojournalist who was killed while covering the Spanish Civil War. She is a microfilm expert at the New York Public Library and can speak six languages. Maria soon finds out that her coworker was chosen to be a part of the task force of librarians who are being trained in espionage and sent overseas to fight against fascism. So, wanting to help her country she pulls off her own mission to get accepted into the program and succeeds and is sent to the neutral city of Lisbon. 

While Maria is in Portugal, she acts as an American official collecting materials for the Library of Congress, often times visiting the bookstores and news dealers in Lisbon to find Axis publications. Maria happens upon a shop where she meets Tiago Soares, a bookstore owner who has a Catholic father and a Jewish mother. Tiago is on his own dangerous mission; providing Jewish refugees with forged passports and visas so they can set sail to the U.S and be free. 

Helping each other with their missions, and growing close to their shared love of the written word, they start to care for each other. After a while though, any future together is jeopardised when Maria's bosses send her on a completely different mission that will put her in the very heart of the Fuhrer's inner circle, and put her in harm's way. 

                                                                              ****

It took me a long time to finish this book, mainly because I don't particularly like reading books that are focused in the past. I like books that are more present and up to date on things, but I still enjoyed this read! 

The beginning of the book is a bit slow but starts to pick up a bit, and it is in two points of view, one in Maria's and the other Tiago's. I like multiple POVs so it was nice to change it up for when Maria's P.O.V was starting to get boring Tiago's would jump in and it has a little action. Now, this book is based off of a true story and I love that the author is a history buff but still chose to do research on the librarians in the war and included a lot of things that actually happened back then. 

Like I said, it was a bit slow but as soon as Maria is sent to Lisbon it does pick up in the action department, so I wasn't as bored as I was in the beginning and I was able to finish reading it without DNFing it. I really hate DNFing books so I'm glad I was able to finish it. Once I was more invested in this, I started to feel emotions for the characters in the book and felt a lot closer to them. There are a lot of depressing and sad moments in the book that completely broke my heart but there were moments that filled my heart with happiness for the characters. 

Alan did a really good job gathering information and pulling the audience in, I definitely would reread this book if I had the time to. I highly recommend reading this book if you haven't yet, my rating is 10/10. 

I have some more things to review on this book but it will require spoilers so I'll work on a new post for that so those of you that haven't read it yet and don't want spoilers you won't see it unless you click on it. 

A big thank you to Goodreads for sending me the ARC and a MASSIVE thank you to all of you that are reading my reviews and following me on Instagram. I know I don't post all that often but it still means a lot to me if I even just have one person reading these. If you have any suggestions on books to review please let me know in the comments or on my Instagram and I will try to do my best at getting the books. I read and write reviews for any genre so don't be shy!