The Expats (2012) (edit title/settings)

• Rated 3 stars

“A twisty thriller about a young woman living an expatriate life in Luxembourg. A little more like Spy vs. Spy than Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, though. Fun - I read it in a day.”

• Rated 4 stars

“Lots of fun! I don't read spy/intrigue/thrillers very much so this was a great fit for me--sort of a Bridget Jones as Reluctant Housewife and Former CIA Agent, if you can imagine that. Maybe not Bridget Jones--but a funny, self-aware voice. About 2/3 of the way through, I really needed to take the book around the house with me--that's my definition of un-put-downable.”

• Rated 4 stars

“A thriller. A good read for the summer. Two couples who have secrets to hide and who are spying on each other. A little contrived and a too quick ending.”

• Rated 3 stars

“I received this book as a give-away at our local book store...interesting read, really didn't know how it was going to end. ”

• Rated 4 stars

“AMAZING! This book merges two genres I would have never thought to put together; musings about contemporary motherhood with suspense/thriller/spy. The result is a book to which many mothers can relate despite never having shot anyone. The real surprise is how long the book manages to keep its central secrets. Each chapter would make me think "oh, now I know what is going on" only to discover a chapter later that I didn't understand at all. Highly recommended. ”

• Rated 2 stars

“Premise good. Didn't care about the characters.”

• Rated 2 stars

“A spy thriller. A wife and mother of two young boys is a CIA agent. Her husband is unaware. When he convinces her they should move to Luxembourg where he has been offered a lucrative job, she leaves her old life behind and tries to start a new life. Boredom sets in and her husband begins acting very suspicious, distant and evasive. When another American couple arrives the woman becomes suspicious that these people are not who they say they are. She suspects that her husband is somehow involved in something illegal. A well written story but the author tells the story changing time back and forth from the present to the past. I found that confusing and annoying. ”

• Rated 5 stars

“fun spymom book.”

• Rated 4 stars

“ first novel it was very good. Not what I expected it to be. Didn't know it was thriller”

• Rated 0 stars

“Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage . . . and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew.
She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesn’t speak, doing the housewifely things she’s never before done—playdates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and never-ending laundry. Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, at a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client she’s not allowed to know. He’s becoming distant and evasive; she’s getting lonely and bored.
Then another American couple arrives. Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they say they are, and she’s terrified that her own past is catching up to her. So Kate begins to dig, to peel back the layers of deception that surround her. She discovers fake offices and shell corporations and a hidden gun, a mysterious farmhouse and numbered accounts with bewildering sums of money, and finally unravels the mind-boggling long-play con that threatens her family, her marriage, and her life.
Stylish and sophisticated, fiercely intelligent and expertly crafted, The Expats proves Chris Pavone to be a writer of tremendous talent.
”