sweet tooth

To prepare for this review of Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth--NOT to be confused with the book that inspired the Netflix show of the same name--I was looking for a cover shot, and another cover showed up that was very familiar. I wasn't searching for another book by McEwan, but maybe I picked this book up at the same library book sale. Maybe they were donated by the same fan. Who knows?

Sweet Tooth is the name of an operation, undertaken by the British secret service, and our protagonist is just getting her feet under her, learning the ropes at her new job, when she is tapped, along with a group of other new young women, to take on this task. Seems pretty thankless; a kind of late, cold war, down-with-communism effort that doesn't seem like it has the potential to win many hearts and minds.

The overall pace of this novel is a little slow, and the stakes aren't especially high. This isn't a James Bond story. I actually got to within about a hundred pages from the end, and I put it down to take a break and read something else. I don't do that often, so yeah, pretty slow. But I'll tell you, when I picked it back up, I was glad I did. The last hundred pages or so were not what I was expecting, and the book ended up being better than I thought it would be. 

I'm a pretty slow reader, and I usually read in short spurts (at breakfast, before going to sleep, maybe 20 minutes at a time) so it takes me a few weeks to pound through a book. If you're a fast reader, then this probably won't be a problem and I can recommend it as a pretty good read. If you are a slower reader, this one might be okay if you have a little more time on your hands, and don't necessarily need a book that keeps you rapt. Like, maybe you're going to the beach, but you also have to keep an eye on the kids, so they don't get swept into the ocean.