I picked up Red Sparrow (affiliate link) at the library because I had heard about it. I hadn’t heard good or bad things just that it was a book and a film. I haven’t seen the film but decided that a spy novel might be a fun read, similar to crime novels but different.

The blurp

In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.

Spies have long relied on the “honey trap,” whereby vulnerable men and women are intimately compromised. Dominika learns these techniques of “sexpionage” in Russia’s secret “Sparrow School,” hidden outside of Moscow. As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and—inevitably—forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC.

My thoughts

It took me a month finishing this book, not because it was long (550 pages) but because it was boring. Yes, a boring spy novel. But that is not what annoyed me the most about the book.

The worst thing about Red Sparrow is how misogynistic the book is. Just horrible.

There is one point in the novel where the Nate and Benford are in a fight with a woman called Jennifer. Throughout that scene she is described as being grotesque, her muscles are too big, her breasts are “not feminine breasts but dinner-plate-sized pectorals with nipples” (p. 342). Why would someone write that? And why would someone publish that!?

There is always these comparisons between the perfect Dominika and the other disposable women in the book. Dominika is the amazing sex goddess and the other women are unattractive, disposable, and generally the opposite of a sex symbol.

I am fine with sexy novels, I think they are pretty great. However, this novel was the opposite of sexy. The sex scenes were just not sexy. I felt as the sex scenes were very strange, as if they were written for some bizarre fantasy. A random lesbian tryst, a quick balcony sex with people waiting in the next room. All described in a very unsexy manner.

All in all, I absolutely hated this book. 0 out of 5 stars!

Any thoughts?

-Katrin