The Expats by Chris Pavone- 2 Stars

[Joi]

The Expats follows Kate, an ex cia-agent and her husband, Dexter moving to Luxemberg and building a new part of their life together with their two kids. With her training and background from the CIA, she quickly becomes suspicious of her surroundings, and learns to question everything and everyone-including her husband. Seems like a great premise. Execution- poor.

I listened this on audiobook, and I think that is one main reason for my rather low rating. The novel flip flops between time periods occasionally, and it was extremely confusing to keep track of while listening to. Also, I felt the audiobook reader wasn't great- all the female voices except the lead sounded way too similar to me, and made it hard to distinguish characters and plotlines. Especially when one of the main points of the book is to determine "what's real and what isn't".

I thought this was going to be more of spy-espionage thriller. What I got was a story of a mom in a foreign country having difficulties doing mom-like things. I get the expat way. I've been an expat in a foreign country, that's one of the reasons I picked this up. But I thought the bits and pieces of Kate's life would lead to the thrill and action. Unfortunately the first 3/4 of the book was just filled of the same thoughts, and it became repetitive. "Where's my husband", "Are these people trying to kill someone?", "What's going on". There are so many times where Kate makes up ideas of what could be happening it's hard to keep straight what are just thoughts, and what is happening in the plotline (again this could be due to the audio).

Plus the characters all seemed "blah" to me. Kate should be a super strong character with her CIA background. But she isn't even smart!! She makes too many mistakes, and it takes her too long to figure things out.

Plus at the end, the "reveal" was poorly done. He explains where he has been, and what he has been doing this whole time and that? No how he did things, no further details, no nothing and that's it, end of novel? Lame.