2019 book 30

Lauren Wilkinson's American Spy
I was really excited to read a spy novel centering on a black woman in the 1980s, and while the book does get a bit into the discrimination she faced, it went off the rails a bit for me. Like, I wanted her to be competent, and we don’t see that much—instead she is distracted by romantic feelings. The novel is written as a letter to her young sons, so some information is missing by default, but it also means the end is somewhat inconclusive. I liked the way the character and her relationships with her family were all written, but just found the actual spy parts kind of disappointing. B.