Item: Red Mistress
Rating: 5.00
Author: bookanonjeff

by Elizabeth Blackwell

In the wake of the Russian Revolution, a determined young woman breaks with her past to become a spy in 1920s Paris, where shadowy intrigues and a dangerous romance put her loyalty to the test.

In the spring of 1914, Nadia Shulkina, the daughter of Russian aristocrats, looks toward a bright future. She has no premonitions of war, let alone the revolution that is about to destroy her comfortable world.

Her once-noble family is stripped of every possession, and more terrible losses soon follow. To save what’s left of her family and future, Nadia marries a zealous Bolshevik in an act of calculated reinvention.

It won’t be her last.

When she agrees to work undercover for the Soviets in 1920s Paris, Nadia is drawn into a beautiful yet treacherous world of secrets and deceit. Beset by conflicting loyalties and tested by a forbidden love affair, she becomes embroiled in a conspiracy that ends with a shocking murder. What chances will she take to determine her own fate?

Red Herring. This book seemed so real that I was *constantly* Googling to see if various people were in fact real. Only to get to the author's note at the end where Blackwell points out that at least a few characters were based on real life people - but the characters did not share the names of the people they were based on. From the opening opulence of Tsarist Russia just prior to WWI to the Bolshevik Revolution to the dramas of the new Political Directorate and Stalin's purges, this book spans about 25 years of momentous history and covers it in a way I had never really seen before. Great work in making every setting believable and almost palpable, and great storytelling within those settings to boot. Very much recommended.

Red Mistress

by Elizabeth Blackwell

Reviewed by Jeff Sexton on Jun 9, 2020

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