The Huntress by Kate Quinn

I'd like to think I jumped the gun reading Kate Quinn's The Huntress (a February, 2019 release) early because I was in a hurry to grab something out of the Guest Room when guests were coming (if Kiddo counts, I still have one guest) but I really think I was just in the mood for this particular story and neglected to look at the release date on the spine. At any rate, it sucked me in so thoroughly that by the time I discovered I was reading a February release in December, it was too late. I was hooked.

The Huntress is the story of three people who are Nazi hunters. Ian has lost a brother to the Huntress, a child-killer who has disappeared from Nazi Germany after WWII without a trace. Tony is his partner. And, Nina barely escaped from the Huntress when her plane went down in a German forest.

Across the ocean, Jordan McBride yearns to become a photographer but her father wants her to take over his antique business. When he brings home a German widow he's fallen in love with, Jordan captures a photo of an icy gaze that makes Jordan suspicious.

The Huntress jumps back and forth in time. You get to know Nina's story as she goes from being a peasant with an abusive father, living on the shores of Lake Baikal, to a pilot with the infamous Night Witches. In the second timeline, after the war, you're following Ian, Tony, and Nina as they search for the Huntress while across the Pond in America, you follow Jordan McBride as she goes from a teenager with a new stepmother to a young woman whose suspicions are renewed when she finds out Annaliese is hiding the truth. Will the team of Nazi hunters find the Huntress before it's too late for Jordan and her family?

Highly recommended - The Huntress is longish at a little over 500 pages but throughout, it remains absolutely gripping. Because it was the holiday season when I was reading the book and I always save my focus for the family when they're around, I only managed to read about 50 pages, most nights, so the book took about 10 days to finish. I didn't care. I enjoyed every minute of the reading. I was very impressed with the detail about the Night Witches, loved the exciting bombing scenes, and found Jordan's story very fitting for the time and place, in addition to enjoying the slow investigation into the whereabouts of the Huntress.

I received a copy of The Huntress from HarperCollins' William Morrow imprint for review. The Huntress is scheduled for release in February.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that this is my final review of books read in 2018, so tomorrow I'll post my full list of everything I read in 2018 (with links to all reviews or month-in-review posts in which I wrote about them).

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