Skandal

If you'll recall, I quite liked Sekret. It was fun and action packed and helped me with my minor reading slump. I confess, though, I knew I wouldn't like this book as much as I liked the first. I wasn't looking forward to picking it up, but I decided to anyway because I didn't know what else to read and I figured this would be fun and action packed enough. However, Skandal didn't grab me the same way Sekret did. Maybe it's because I thought (and honestly still think) that Sekret didn't really need a second book. It was just fine on its own. It was just kind of the first book but taking place in America instead of the Soviet Union. I did, however, enjoy the writing. I particularly liked Smith's descriptions, they were pretty and set the scene up nicely. Sure, the way the characters spoke seemed like it was right out of a 60s noir movie, but I managed to let myself enjoy it, even if it was a bit painful. Yulia was still the same okay main character. I still cared little for her and Valentin. The other characters didn't really interest me much and didn't do anything surprising to me. I just excused this as being a fun book and not one that was meant to be a literary masterpiece. I do think that Smith went with the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to historical fiction that I talked about in my A Death-Struck Year review. She threw in basically everything that people think of when they think of the 60s, and even a few of the 50s. Greasers, beatniks, Vietnam, Kennedy's assassination, the Cold War, mod clothing, the Beatles, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis- whether it actually fit or not it was going in. Frankly, she should just have focused on the Cold War or maybe Vietnam or Cuba, to make for a more centered story. While I did like that scene in the jazz club, it felt a bit forced and not natural with the storyline. Continue reading this review on my blog here: http://bookwormbasics.blogspot.com/20...