11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Suspense that's hard to put down, January 23, 2009
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As a State Department intelligence officer, Jordan Weiss' job has taken her to dangerous locations all around the world. However, one place she's refused to return to is England and the memories of Cambridge a decade earlier. When her dear friend Sarah, in the final stages of Lou Gehrig's disease, needs her in London, she decides to go be by her side. She requests and receives a transfer to London so she can be with her friend in her time of need, unaware that this new assignment may be one of the most dangerous yet.
Soon after her arrival an old friend, Chris, contacts her. He has some lingering doubts about what happened in Cambridge ten years previously, resulting in the death of Jordan's boyfriend, Jared. Chris convinces Jordan to return to Cambridge where they soon have more questions than answers as they quickly discover Jared's death wasn't the drowning accident they'd been led to believe.
Suspense and intrigue abound as Jordan searches for answers in Pam Jenoff's third novel (after The Kommandant's Girl and The Diplomat's Wife). The novel is full of twists and turns as Jordan comes closer to the truth. Jenoff deftly combines Jordan's story of 10 years ago with the present day in such a way that it will keep the reader glued to the pages as the mystery unravels. I am off to pluck her other two books off my TBR pile; I think I have discovered a new auto-buy author. Highly recommended.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Could Be Better, January 8, 2009
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The imagery is stunning and the basic plot is gripping and this is why she earns an extra star above 2, but other than that I had a hard time believing this book. The main character Jordan is supposed to be a very good secret agent, but this identity is not very believable as some of the people in the book who do not have her training are better at what she does than she is! Other things that bothered me in the book were the way some minor plot lines were started and then abandoned halfway though. We are also left with a lot of unanswered questions about how the ending even came about. This makes it a little confusing at times to understand how things have happened. One such time we become confused at how major plot lines get twisted was the way her college boyfriend was buried. He was interred without his relatives even identifying his body or having anything to do with the funeral arrangements. (And *mini spoiler*! this is a major deal, and half of the plot rests on this!) It seemed like the author tried to put in a lot of Red Herrings to keep the reader guessing but never managed to tie them up in the end, and in some cased even failed do justice to major plot lines.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lies, lies, lies, January 5, 2009
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Pam Jenoff's "Almost Home" is an uncannily captivating thriller of the return after ten years by Jordan Weiss, a highly intelligent, attractive, and successful American diplomat, to her traumatic graduate days at Cambridge University in England.
In a world of lies that she does not know are lies, she is duped from the beginning in an increasingly harrowing tale of espionage and deception that brings into question everything she has believed about present and past relationships.
For all her experience as a senior U.S. official in State Department postings around the world, she retains a naïveté that many colleagues and friends are ready to exploit. Upon hearing that her former schoolmate and best friend Sarah has a terminal disease, she requests a London posting to be near her to help.
Only Sarah's condition could have brought Jordan back to the ultimate sadness that had marred her Cambridge days. Jordan had loved being coxswain of the university boating crew. She had also loved Jared Short, a doctoral student, who was the crew leader. She had shared his bed, hoping eventually to share a future life. That was not to be, for one night, after celebrating, Jared had inexplicably drowned in the river.
Jordan's dual attention is directed to her day job at the embassy as a top investigator of organized crime and money laundering in the U.K., while simultaneously trying to find out the details surrounding Jared's drowning. Was there a connection? In alternating flashbacks and current episodes, author Pam Jenoff tells a suspenseful, sensual, engrossing, and challenging story. Not for the prudish. Hold on for the ride, you are definitely going to be surprised.
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