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wai's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Sexism, Sexual content, Pregnancy, and Abandonment
Minor: Animal death, Cancer, and Death of parent
starrysteph's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
A ladies quartet of 60 year old assassins, ready to retire but pulled back in to save their skins against the very organization that trained them? It was as fun as anticipated.
We follow Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie. They were hand-plucked as young women to train as elite assassins for a society called the Museum. After forty years of dedicated killing, they’re sent on a luxury cruise to celebrate their retirement. But once they arrive, they realize they’re being targeted by one of their own. That organization they’ve been loyal to for so many years? They’ve now got to take them down.
Raybourn offers a playful sense of humor here. There’s lots of banter and sass and well-developed relationships between the ladies with lots of quippy fun. And I’m not someone who typically enjoys pop culture/modern references - but they worked well within the text and were genuinely funny. There’s big action scenes, but also fun slices of life moments; and also plenty of planning and prep work.
The timeline shifts between present day, and their training & first assignments as young women. Overall, it was refreshing to read a book from the perspective of an older narrator. And there were fun plot points centered around the fact that their age renders them more or less invisible – though to be clear, they aged themselves up a bit for their disguises. 60 isn’t elderly. :)
But building off of their invisibility as older women, over a series of flashbacks we witness the men who sent them on missions time and time again underestimate and undervalue them. And the women? They’re the ones who save their skins when things go wrong. Now those men - who hold grudges against the quartet because they” stole their thunder” - are the ones running the Museum, while the women are sent on their merry way.
This is a book about RAGE. Revenge is sometimes placed over justice, from the women’s initial recruitment to the final takedown.
The setup seems to point us towards viewing the ladies as heroic. They attempt to justify their assassinations time & time again - like, “oh, we’re killing BAD guys, people that are definitely going to harm others and get away with it because of their wealth and power!”. Lots of talk about killing Nazis and so on.
But of course … killing is still killing, and vigilante justice never has clear boundaries. I felt a bit of craving to just let them be villainous - I enjoy a villain story centered around murderers (think: Dexter or Hannibal). There was some pressure from the storytelling to view them as like, feminist baddies. But the truth is that they are … well, murderers. And they’re putting full faith in the Museum to find the worst of the worst to take down. They go through planning sessions fairly often, and they mentioned quite a bit that the Museum does research & there are many steps to confirm a hit. But this is the same entity that so easily put out a hit on them based on totally fake information! This is the major conflict of the book, and so it puts a pretty big shadow over their earlier kills. How many could have been political moves rather than “justified”?
Anyway, we wrap up neatly but with some hope. There’s a hint at a continuing story, but this works as a standalone.
Overall, it was a quick, fun read. I think it would work even better on screen!
CW: murder, gun violence, death, gore, misogyny, violence, blood, colonization, homophobia, grief, pregnancy, sexual content, torture, kidnapping, war
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Gun violence, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail
srm's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
So much fun! I want all the comedy thrillers about 60-year-old women assassins now, please. The four women at the heart of this book are who I want to grow up to be--at the end of middle age and still vital and still ready to take on the world.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Gun violence, and Violence
Minor: Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Torture, Blood, Grief, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Yes, there's some blood and violence, because it's a book about assassins, but it's really pretty tame.