Need to Know ~ Karen Cleveland (Pub. Date January 23, 2018)

Cleveland, Karen. 2018. Need to Know. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. ISBN  978- 1524797027. $26.00 USD.

I am very excited about the release of this debut spy thriller written by former CIA analyst Karen Cleveland.  I was lucky to receive a digital advance reader’s copy a few months ago and have been recommending it for a while for customer holds.

The reviews have been mixed, so all I have to say is that I stayed up until 1 a.m. two nights in a row, work nights (!), in order to finish it.  I don’t read books to find the faults; I read them for pleasure, and this one fit the bill for me.

The main character, Vivan, is a married CIA Analyst (natch) with four young children.  She works for the Counterintelligence Center, Russia Division, which is searching for agents who are running sleeper cells in the U.S.  During the course of her research, she discovers something ominous that directly affects her family, and that is where the book really takes off.  Written in the present, with flashbacks to her relationship with her husband, it is almost impossible to stop reading.

Even Lee Child says, “Prediction: If you read chapter one, you’ll read chapter two. If you read chapter two, you’ll miss dinner, stay up far too late, and feel tired at work tomorrow. This is that kind of book.  Superb.”  I have to concur with his statement on this book, as that is exactly what happened when I read it.

The author does a fabulous job of ending many of the chapters with bombshells that left me gasping. The suspense and tension in this book were so high that at times I covered my eyes with my hand with just enough room to peek between my fingers at the text I was reading! That was really a first for me in the hundreds of books I’ve read as a bibliophile and librarian.  I wanted to skim the pages at times to get to the next part of the story.  My emotions were all over the place while reading it, and I even read the ending three times, just to let it all sink in.  It’s not without a few flaws (plot holes), but the story was so enjoyable that I happily overlooked them when I saw them.

 Need to Know will make a great movie, and I’m pretty sure it’s already been optioned.  I’m always so impressed with debut authors who pull off such great first novels.  Highly recommended!  Happy Reading!