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A review by singsthewren
The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer
3.0
I read this for my book club - it's not the kind of book I normally gravitate towards. I have read a few spy thrillers in the past, but it's a genre I usually prefer to watch. I find the action sequences more interesting on screen, and often it seems like new information is 'discovered' by just sort of... asking someone? And they just tell you? And I find that really boring to read. The 'reveal' of information by dialogue makes my eyes drift closed...
That being said, overall I did like the book, though I don't plan to continue the series. I thought the characters were really well done and that got me through a lot of the less interesting passages. I particularly liked the final part of the book, where we got to see the story unfold from a bunch of different perspectives.
The book definitely suffered from the pace at which I was reading it - because I was devouring about 100 pages in a go and then not picking it up for a week, by the time I got back to it I had forgotten character names (I'm never great with names which I think is part of why this genre doesn't play well for me), so there would be a big reveal that X character had turned out to be involved and I was like.. who is that?! There were two Russian characters and I thought they were the same person for about 3/4 of the book (boy, was I confused...)! So, yeah. I am not great with spy mysteries.
If you like this style of book I think you would really like this one. It was intelligent and fun and the twists were believable but still surprising.
That being said, overall I did like the book, though I don't plan to continue the series. I thought the characters were really well done and that got me through a lot of the less interesting passages. I particularly liked the final part of the book, where we got to see the story unfold from a bunch of different perspectives.
The book definitely suffered from the pace at which I was reading it - because I was devouring about 100 pages in a go and then not picking it up for a week, by the time I got back to it I had forgotten character names (I'm never great with names which I think is part of why this genre doesn't play well for me), so there would be a big reveal that X character had turned out to be involved and I was like.. who is that?! There were two Russian characters and I thought they were the same person for about 3/4 of the book (boy, was I confused...)! So, yeah. I am not great with spy mysteries.
If you like this style of book I think you would really like this one. It was intelligent and fun and the twists were believable but still surprising.