Title: The Secrets We Kept

Author: Lara Prescott

Publisher: Knopf 2019

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 349

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Decades - 1950s; 52 Book Club - 4 Different POV

At the height of the Cold War, Irina, a young Russian-American secretary, is plucked from the CIA typing pool and given the assignment of a lifetime. Her mission: to help smuggle Doctor Zhivago into the USSR, where it is banned, and enable Boris Pasternak’s magnum opus to make its way into print around the world. Mentoring Irina is the glamorous Sally Forrester: a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit, using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Under Sally’s tutelage, Irina learns how to invisibly ferry classified documents—and discovers deeply buried truths about herself.

One of the book club selections for the year. Thank good that this story is by and large interesting and thought-provoking. We follow multiple women in multiple locations as they are involved in a variety of espionage activities. The story mostly focuses on Olga and Irina, but I found their stories not my favorite. I wanted to hear even more about the typists and specifically about Sally. It was fascinating to me how the various women are directly involved in espionage, but are still somehow left out of actual intelligence. It’s an interesting dichotomy in history. By the end of the book, I was very sad about the fates of all the women featured in the book. But the story is probably much more realistic that way.

Next up on the TBR pile: