Traveling Sisters Group read: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Traveling Sister Group read

We read this book along with three of our Traveling Sisters and Norma & I ended up having different feelings about this novel than our other sisters did, leaving us lost in the coulee without our sisters as we enjoyed this a little bit more than they did.

The Alice Network is an interesting, fascinating, and an extraordinary historical fiction novel that is centered around a spy network of women lead by the remarkable Louise de Bettignies or Alice Dubois as she was known within this network of spies.

The story is told in two separate timelines from our two main characters perspectives, Eve and Charlie bringing the two stories together in the end. Kate Quinn does a fantastic job here with Eve’s character and storyline as her character was fascinating, interesting, and compelling to read.

The story told from emotional, broken, grief and guilt-stricken Eve’s perspective we learn her backstory and her part in The Alice Network. This was our favorite part of the story as we really enjoyed the friendships here and their deep connection that they had with each other. Eve’s character and her perspectives we felt were the strongest part of this story. We really could feel and see their loyalty and how protective they were of each other. We loved how the Kate Quinn gave her a stutter and it really showed how she was able to use that to her advantage. The characters involved in this storyline were Eve, Lili and Vivian who are remarkable and memorable characters.

Now for Charlie’s perspective, we didn’t enjoy her storyline as much as we did Eve’s and this became a big part of our discussion. We all agreed we had some concerns with her character and this is where our opinions differed as her character affected the enjoyment of the story for our traveling sisters. This is where we were left lost in the coulee with our thoughts by our traveling sisters. This affected their rating but not for Norma and I. We all agreed on some things to her storyline seemed out of place and didn’t fit into that time period for us. They felt Charlie’s character brought a little chick-lit to the storyline and that distracted them from the overall enjoyment of the story. There was a little eye rolling going on here with some parts of Charlie’s story that had Brenda rolling her eyes too. Our sisters felt her character was too annoying, immature, and careless. Where Brenda and Norma felt she brought an important and interesting part to Eve’s story as they came together which added an exciting and compelling element to the storyline. Now, this is where the story did pick up for our sisters and they did start to like and enjoy Charlie’s character a little bit more.

The Alice Network made for an interesting group read and discussion that we all really enjoyed. We all agreed we really appreciated learning about the remarkable Alice Network. We recommend for group reads and for anyone looking to learn more about this very interesting part of history and the workings of this spy network of women.