The Secrets We Kept (2019), by Lara Prescott

What, I wonder, does a reputable book publisher like Knopf do, when they’ve paid $2million in a bidding war for a novel that turns out to be lame?  I’m guessing that they spend *a lot* of money on an avalanche of publicity so that it races up the bestseller lists before the reviews come out.

And what do those bestseller buyers do when they get home and read the book?  Well, some of them write very cross reviews at Goodreads  — which make an interesting contrast with the 5-star GR reviews and the ones from the quality press. e.g. at The Guardian.

The Secrets We Kept ought to be a terrific book. The premise is excellent, the potential for emotional investment is great.  The valiant fight against Soviet repression by outsmarting them offers bonus opportunities to mock America’s enemies as well.  This is the blurb:

Secretaries turned spies, love and duty, and sacrifice—inspired by the true story of the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia, not with propaganda, but with the greatest love story of the twentieth century: Doctor Zhivago.

At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dare publish it, and help Pasternak’s magnum opus make its way into print around the world. Glamorous and sophisticated Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit all over the world–using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a complete novice, and under Sally’s tutelage quickly learns how to blend in, make drops, and invisibly ferry classified documents.

At Goodreads, my favourite review is from Paula.  I couldn’t have said it better myself, and I’m not going to try because I’ve wasted enough time on this tawdry novel.  (Besides, truth be told, I have no business writing a review anyway because the writing is so bad, I skipped lots of it.)

Awful. I should have known better than to believe the blurb, but Zhivago being a book dear to me, I thought it might illuminate an interesting part of the book´s path to publication and acclaim. Nowhere near that.
It´s chick lit, and very bad chick lit. The characters´ voices are interchangeable, besides being shallow, one dimensional and sometimes plain silly. The “romance” is badly done, the writing is choppy and repetitive.
The book (Zhivago) is just filler, even Pasternak and Olga are caricatures.
Yes, I´m angry. Angry at the publishers for selling junk for what it´s not, and at myself, for falling for it.

Her buddy reader Marylyce wasn’t impressed either.

Well I made it up to the 62% point until I flung this book into the dnf pile. I am pretty annoyed that what I thought I was reading, a spy drama concerning the bringing of the book Dr Zhivago to the west and publishing it as a cautionary tale against a totalitarian regime, became nothing but a chick lit story.

JanB abandoned it too:

DNF’d at 38%
I was expecting a suspenseful spy novel, but what I got was thinly disguised romance/chick-lit. It’s all too common with historical fiction in recent years, and why I struggle with the genre.
The love affair between Pasternak and Olga left me cold, the alternating narratives in the West chapters were confusing, the secretarial pool characters lacked depth, and the writing style was simplistic. Frankly, I was bored silly.

(I think JanB has been a bit unfair to HistFic.  There’s some really good historical novels around these days, it’s just that The Secrets They Kept just isn’t one of them.)

Olive Fellows generously rated it two stars:

I didn’t think it was possible to write a novel containing spies that completely lacks mystery or intrigue, but alas. So much promise, but it completely falls flat since it leans on totally hollow characters.

The saddest thing is that this wretched novel appears to have discouraged some readers from ever reading Doctor Zhivago…

I have two more ‘International Bestsellers’ for holiday reading on the bedside table. I chose them from the TBR because (like The Secrets They Kept) they have uninspiring titles, and it’s time to deal with them.  Read or recycle!

Author: Lara Prescott
Title: The Secrets We Kept
Publisher: Windmill Books, (Penguin Random House, first published by Knopf 2019
ISBN: 9781786090744, paperback, 456 pages
Source: Personal library, purchased from Readings $19.99