Very much enjoyed this one! I enjoy spy novels and coupled with some recent political intrigue, I found this an easy and enjoyable read. 3 1/2 stars rounded up to 4.

I received this book as an ARC and this is my review. I loved this book! The characters are loaded with quirks and flaws and the story is full of twists and turns. The historical perspective is fascinating and the look inside the lives of a sitting President and First Lady is filled with drama and turmoil. I totally recommend this book to any reader who enjoys mystery and history intertwined in a compelling story.

I have read all of Anna Pitonak’s books, and this is by far my favorite! Our American Friend is part love story, part spy novel, and it’s perfectly written. If you loved An American Wife, this is in the same vein - a thinly veiled story of the women in the White House with recognizable elements to true-life action. I absolutely adored this book and cannot wait to see what Anna comes up with next!

Thank you Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC. I am wavering between 2 & 3 stars for this one because I'm unsure how I felt about it, to be honest. First, the things I know I did not like: for a self-described "spy thriller," the pacing was off and the chapters are ENTIRELY too long. Only 18 chapters for an espionage novel? No. The pacing needs to be much faster with shorter chapters designed to ramp up the tension in the same way the characters experience it. This story, instead, felt mostly plodding. Other things that weren't great for me: we don't need Sofie's character or storyline at all. Had this book been pitched as historical fiction and consisted of entirely Lara's story, it would have been much more compelling. I found myself itching to get back to those characters and thought Sofie and Ben were BORING.

I'm also unclear on if this is meant to be Melania Trump fan-fiction or just wishful thinking on the part of our author. There is enough here for us to assume that the author is not a fan of the Trumps, but there's also this weird fangirl vibe for the Lara character who is modeled on Melania. Our main character also spends a lot of time waxing poetic on her complicity in working with this fictional-but-based-on-Trump-administration, but instead of feeling authentic it felt really surface-level. It was hard for me to imagine Sofie's ability to self-reflect--it didn't feel natural at all. I'm still not sure what I think of this as it's not nearly as well done as say...the wishful thinking and self-reflection in Rodham, by Curtis Sittenfeld, for example.

Good things: it was a quick read, if only because I did want to know how it all played out in the end. And much of the writing is strong. But again, much of the actual story felt forced and unnecessary. Not sure it's one I'll be recommending, though I love seeing more women writing in the espionage drama.

Whomp, whomp.

The premise is essentially, "What if Melania Trump was good, actually, and worked with the CIA to orchestrate her Russian-government-enmeshed husband's resignation?" Truly the dream of those people who thought she was reining her husband in, or convincing him to be kinder to immigrants, when the signs that she was and is merely a woman who enjoys wealthy and privilege. As a bonus in this book, the CIA is painted as heroic, everyone working for the CIA is also (sometimes tragically) heroic, and the journalist/protagonist who is tricked into helping with what is essentially a CIA-backed coup of the actual country the CIA is a working body of — she's also heroic. No one says one word about what horrors the CIA inflicted on people around the globe, or why, say, taking CIA money to start your dissident expat magazine in Paris might, I don't know, compromise your values as a committed socialist? It's utter nonsense, and so fixated on the Cold War and the suffering the USSR's government inflicted on its people it either omits or glosses over any suffering anyone else under any other type of government might be experiencing, as though the USSR's position up to its collapse was unique to it. As though no other government has ever harmed its people with policies that cause mass starvation, or homelessness, or increased state surveillance and retaliatory violence to those who speak against it. It pretends to present a multifaceted view of different people, their actions, their motivations, but its tunnel vision: — "USA good. USSR/Russia Bad. Big Greedy President Bad" — renders the characters flat, forgetting some almost entirely (the sister's husband? The protagonist's husband?).

Further, I can only hope the ARC I received was not copy-edited and/or fact-checked, as it described multiple times the protagonist's view of the Mediterranean from Split, Croatia, which is firmly located on the Adriatic Coast. The book literally opens with a description of the Mediterranean in winter that the protagonist is seeing from her flat (or on a walk, honestly I can't remember) in Split. Not the strongest start to an excruciatingly dull novel. Spy thriller, indeed. I was thrilled when it ended.

It's hard to say if I liked this book or not. I will say it was very interesting and kept me turning the pages to see what happened next. My hesitation about liking it or not is because it seems as if the author took the history of the last presidential administration, changed the names and some of the nationalities, and added a couple little twists and called it a novel. And some of the twists she added were so out of character for the president and First Lady she was using as a model that it made it a little bit annoying. I just kept saying "he would never have done that" or "she wouldn't do that". Maybe if the story didn't mirror the last administration so closely, it might have been more believable. Not sure I would read this if I had realized what the author had done.

4.5 stars
I really, really enjoyed this book. I love anything having to do with spies or the Cold War, so this was right up my alley. Henry and Lara reminded me of 45 and Mrs 45, and the way their plot unfolded was super imaginative and really just a lot of fun. The book is fast-paced and flips through multiple timelines, and I loved the somewhat non-linear format.
In short, I thought this was terrific and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC!

This was a very satisfying read. It started a little predictably with political drama and a subtle but clear (and warranted) roasting of Donald Trump. But then the scene begins to shift between Russia, Paris and America and things get very intense, interesting and unpredictable. The character development is great and the intrigue as historically accurate and realistic. Overall, a very worthwhile and fulfilling book that I highly recommend to those who like political/historical intrigue.

When I began this book, I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish it. I was in a similar mental place as the main character is in the beginning of her journey; I just don't want to think about the former president anymore. Unluckily for Sofie Morse, her version - President Caine - wins the 2020 election. She quits her job as a journalist on the White House beat and retreats home to New York, until the First Lady personally requests Sofie to write her biography. Though initially torn and reluctant, Sofie is reeled in by Lara Caine's story from the start.

In this version of events, FLOTUS is Russian, and when she was young, her father had been an undercover KGB agent stationed in Paris. After falling for a teenage Russian rebel of sorts, Lara became involved - and worked undercover herself.

Lara Caine is candid with Sofie, sharing details that could have incredible impacts on both national security and to the president's political image, but trusting Sofie not to publish prematurely. Lara is smart, courageous, wiley, and intent on a goal - just one that Sofie has yet to understand...

Wanting some distance from real life American political realities, I wasn't sure I'd like this book. But I, like Sofie, was riveted by Lara's story and in the end, her courage to act. Our American Friend is brilliantly written and keenly observed - I wasn't able to put it down.

Thank you #NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy. You have a big hit on your hands. In a year of so many great books, THIS will no doubt rank at the very top of all that I’ve read lately.

Our American Friend is a political thriller that resonates with so much of our recent experience during the Trump years. The narrator, Sofie, a journalist, burnt out by her 4 years covering the White House during the first term of a Trump like president, leaves her job to pursue new writing projects. Almost immediately Sofie is summoned by the enigmatic First Lady, reminiscent of Melania Trump, to write her biography. Russian born Lara, daughter of a KGB officer, is much more complicated than her aloof, supermodel persona appears and seems eager to share her backstory. What’s her angle? Can Sofie trust that she is telling the truth.

The author seamlessly jumps through multiple time frames and the plot turns in a way I didn’t expect.

Loved it!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read and review "Our American Friend" by Ann Pitoniak.

Imagine a world where a Trumpesque president wins his second term This is the scenario painted in the book where controversial President Henry Caine and his wife Lara Caine are living in the White House for four more years. Lara Caine, daughter of a KGB agent, born in Russia and raised in Paris reaches out to journalist Sofie Morse to write her biography. Initially leery of the task, Sofie accepts the assignment and grows closer to Lara as Lara shares the secrets of her life.

The book opens with Sofie and her boyfriend on the run and hiding in Croatia. Something to do with Lara Caine and the book they were writing together has caused Sofie to flee America. What happened? The author takes us on a thrilling ride to ultimately answer that question.

I enjoyed reading "Our American Friend" and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys spy thrillers.

A fun political thriller dealing with espionage starting in 1970s Soviet Union through modern day USA. The author does some brilliant connections to real life people even allowing some similarities to a modern day former model. It makes one really begin to wonder about how life worked in that spy era - the many complexities involved and the dangers that are involved. Thanks to NetGalley for the advance read.

This was an extremely captivating read. From the very first chapter it draws the reader in. The incessant curiosity that drives a reader into this multi-plot mystery is an echo of the main character Sofie's journalistic need to find out more about the books other main character, FLOTUS Lara.

"Our American Friend" essentially features a president in office causing continued damage to the entire U.S. and even beyond, with out a doubt modeled after Trump. The added small details spread in the book— how President Caine was backed by Russian ruler to ensure election, how he loathed the press and made up grand conspiracies, how teflon he was no matter what weekly scandal— all added up to a not so subtle nod to Trump. While I appreciated those moments, the real story lies with his Russian born wife, Lara, whose father was a leader in the Soviet Union's SGK. What follows is a riveting story of intrigue, mystery, love, and loss, spanning from Lara's childhood to how she ended up as FLOTUS to an exceptionally cruel man. I loved how this story really focused on the stories and connections made in the shadows.

Most refreshing about this book was Pitoniak demonstrates exactly how important her craft is in this novel with an intricate storyline containing many twists and turns. The history and timeline of Lara is so intriguing and well spread out it reads of a real jounralistic feature piece, where all the time lines compel the reader further into the plot. Each plot line and time jump from past to present was well thought out and added together quite great. While there were few true shocking reveals in this book, the plots perfect pacing, storytelling, and mystery were incredible. The books plot came together much like how Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" movie did, minus the more shocking twists the movie had.

This is probably one of the best historical fiction books I've read in a while.

The only aspect of the book I didn't like was the eventual depiction of the CIA as an unlikely, underdog hero doing the best it can when the CIA has its own shady history of doing many wrong things. This is somewhat acknowledge in one of the sacrifices that comes from the CIA's actions but not enough when the organization as a whole looks like a hero.

What if Melania Trump had ties to the KGB all along? This intriguing premise is the basis of Our American Friend.

First Lady Lara Caine wants an author to write her biography, and she selects journalist Sofie Morse to do the honors. As Sofie develops a relationship with Lara, she learns more about Lara’s childhood in Moscow and Paris, and the events that led to her father’s mysterious death. Events that seem safely in the past prove to have repercussions through time, and as we glean from the present-day timeline, Sofie is in trouble (and in exile in Croatia).

I loved the premise of this novel, and found it to be an enjoyable read. It starts very slowly and rather confusingly, but revelations about halfway through the book changed the narrative and sped up the pace considerably. I read the last third of the book frantically - I had to know what happened!

There are three timelines that weave throughout this book, and that can get confusing at times. I especially had trouble differentiating between Sofie-today and Sofie-last year (and sometimes Sofie-two years ago?), and found that confusion a bit distracting, specifically when timelines would shift mid-chapter. But again about halfway through the book, things gelled into place and it was much easier to follow.

I would recommend this book to fans of political thrillers, historical fiction, and spy novels.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.

Pub Date 2/15/22 #OurAmericanFriend #Netgalley

The try-this-try-that-try-anything frustration I've experienced in trying to get down my thoughts about Anna Pitoniak’s “Our American Friend” -- like a literary pinball I’ve been, ricocheting among books, articles, even a movie about the devil, seeking a way just to think about the book -- has had me recalling how the novelist John Fowles said that his strongest memory of the composition of his "The Magus" was of constantly having to abandon drafts for not being able to describe what he wanted. Not a bad work to cite, in fact, that most fascinatingly unclassifiable of his novels, in registering my difficulty in dealing with Pitoniak's book, not just for the trouble that Fowles experienced in the novel’s writing but also for how the novel's closing lines have had readers over the years puzzling over them in the way that Pitoniak’s last lines have had me puzzling over hers.
They're the culmination of a novel which has a reader a bit off-balance from its very beginning, which finds its journalist protagonist Sofie Morse -- note the last name -- and her husband having had to relocate to Croatia after some sort of action launched against the novel's President Caine, who with how he has survived a number of corruption investigations and impeachment proceedings is clearly patterned on former president Trump. There’s even the suspicion, Sofie notes, that he has an "understanding" with a Russian leader clearly modeled on Putin.
No one quite knows what to do with a man such as that, she sums up about him, prompting a character who will come to play a more critical role than it seems at the time to remark that he fears that some people know all too well what to do about him. It’s unclear to me even upon repeated readings whether the character is referring to the lengths to which Caine’s supporters might be willing to go to keep him in power or the things that his opponents might be willing to do to bring him down, but either way it’s clear that we're meant to take his views seriously, with how he’s a close confidant of Sofie in the way that, to employ what might seem the unlikeliest of comparisons, the Hutch character is of the heroine in “Rosemary’s Baby,” which I saw again the other night and which got me to thinking that a story about the devil’s spawn might not be the worst way to approach Pitoniak’s novel.
Caine isn't the literal devil in the way of Rosemary's offspring, with horns and a tail and a pitchfork, but in a novel in which names are very much signifiers (Sofie = wisdom), it’s not without significance to me that he bears the name of someone who some believe was the son of the devil. And Maurice, the oppositional character with the fear of what some people might do about Caine, is from St. Petersburg, which he calls “Peter,” the name of the apostle regarded by some as the first leader of the early church. And in what might simply be pure coincidence, though with Pitonik I’m disinclined to see anything as pure coincidence, the actor who plays Hutch in the Mia Farrow version of “Rosemary” is named Maurice.
Be it a stretch or not to see Caine as at least representative of the devil, he’s worrisome enough for Maurice to have gotten him involved with a set of characters who've hatched an elaborate, even wildly improbable scheme to be rid of Caine -- it's what has made for Sofie and her husband being in Croatia -- which calls as a first step Caine’s wife, Lara, who for all her Eastern European roots is decidedly not Melania, to reach out to Sofie to write her biography.
It’s something that Sofie is initially hesitant about, even suspicious of, as she questions Lara’s motives, but so horrified is she by Caine’s re-election -- unlike Trump, Caine has secured the presidency for a second term -- that she has quit her newspaper job and is looking to establish herself in a new way -- the very sort of reason Lara gives for wanting to write her biography, to show the world that she's not just the president's wife but a person in her own right with her own distinctive beginnings.
Born in Moscow, she’s the daughter of a high-ranking official in the Communist Party who in the '70s was dispatched as a military attache to the Soviet embassy in Paris. It's there that Lara meets and falls in love with a young Russian dissident, Sasha, in a doomed union which will ultimately figure into Lara's family being dispatched back to Russia, where her father's eventual death will be attributed by authorities to natural causes but her mother is certain was an execution prompted by the KGB coming to think that he had turned traitor.
I’ll refrain from being too specific about further plot details so as not to make for any spoilers, other than to say that in the course of the developments in Paris and Moscow, including Lara coming to know about Chernobyl, she will be brought to new heights of awareness and eventually show herself to be capable of more courage than she might ever have imagined, courage, indeed, so remarkable that it will bring Sofie to her own expression of courage.
Along the way there will be plot machinations to make for possible categorization of the novel as a political thriller -- as I say, the plot to oust Caine is pretty convoluted -- but there are also distinct indications, including Lara being compared in both name and appearance to Julie Christie in "Doctor Zhivago," that author Pitoniak has weightier concerns on her mind, among them the relationship between a journalist and his subject and the very nature of the journalistic enterprise as well as, particularly with the epigraph from Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," the relationship of the individual to the state (definitely not a coincidence, I’d wager, that Maurice shares the last name of the psychiatrist Alfred Adler, known for his theory of “individual psychology.”)
Truth is a particular concern in the novel, with Sofie remarking that her newspaper job and the measure of objectivity it required have atrophied her muscle for speaking the truth -- for, as she puts it, saying what a thing is. It’s a concern which will be explored in a number of ways in the novel, including, as I say, citation of the disaster at Chernobyl, about which the news from Soviet authorities is so muted that Lara and her father marvel that they’re able to get a clearer idea of what happened from Western news sources than the people actually living at the site could. Indeed, it's the urge to get the truth out about what’s actually going on in the Soviet state that brings about Sasha's demise, an event traumatic enough for Lara to have her wanting to continue Sasha's efforts and years later wanting to team up with Sofie in an action against her husband which, for all her initial reservations, Sofie can’t help but go along with for her journalist’s commitment to truth.
Though just as important for her as truth, perhaps even more so, is the issue of identity and in particular trying to see the world through another's eyes (the particular focus of the Koestler epigraph), a concern which becomes ever stronger as her relationship with Lara intensifies, particularly when she's invited to join the first lady for a time at the first lady's retreat in Connecticut.
“It’s becoming my real life, when I’m with her,” Sofie thinks at one point about the increasingly blurred line between her own identity and that of Lara, a blurring which will reach its fullest expression in the novel's final lines, where I’d suggest the blurring even extends to the distinction between Sofie and author Pitoniak. Indeed, I’d argue that it's only by attributing the novel's final lines to the author herself that the fullest sense can be made of them, with their suggestion of something going on beyond the literal action of the novel, which by the point of those lines is pretty well concluded.
“I cannot live with myself if I do not try,” the final lines say, and with that suggestion of something ongoing or yet to come, it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to suppose that in a book which at one point speaks of "the carefully engineered reveal, the game that was so much bigger than her,” Pitoniak might have envisioned her novel as some sort of coded or camouflaged message or even outright call to action about the real-life Trump, even if to my mind she doesn’t quite pull off whatever exactly might have been her vision.
For one thing, the final lines, which to my mind are in a league with such notable closings as those of Fitzgerald’s “Gatsby” or John Knowles' "A Separate Peace," have an almost tacked-on feel or at any rate don't seem sufficiently integrated or prepared for -- three times I’ve read the novel and still they stick out for me from what’s come before. Plus I'm still trying to decide exactly what to make of the title, which would seem to refer to the CIA agent integral to the plot against Caine, but there are also other turns on “friend,” including Lara’s sister saying to Sofie that “not in a long time has she had a friend like you,” that suggest greater shades of meaning.
I'm not one usually to call for novels to be longer, but in this case it seems to me that, particularly if I’m right that some sort of covert or camouflaged signaling to the reader is going on, and Sofie’s last name would certainly seem to support such a supposition, greater length might have made for a more definitive presentation or at least laid greater groundwork for those final lines, which as I say seem somewhat jarring as they stand. A more pronounced extratextual authorial presence in the way of, say, Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman,” might also have bolstered any such intent, and indeed there’s a quickly passing moment in the Paris section in which, as in Fowles' novel, there's the suggestion of an omniscient narrator but, as I say, the moment is fast-passing and, as with the closing lines, most notable to me for how it stands out so starkly from the rest of the novel. Which might, of course, simply be an indication that I'm trying to make the novel fit some notion of my own as to its intent, but there are just enough suggestions in keeping with my notion to make me think that, indeed, Pitoniak had a larger but unrealized vision for her novel.
Regardless, even if read at its most literal, Pitoniak's novel is never less than propulsively readable as well as extremely well-written, and with its cultural Cold War concerns on a par with the two best novels I've read in recent years on that topic, Ellen Feldman's "The Unwitting, " with its slow unraveling for the narrator of the novel's underlying truths, and, perhaps even more germanely, with its final reveal, Ian McEwan's "Sweet Tooth."
A significant literary achievement, at any rate, Pitoniak's novel, and one that for all the devil of a time it gave me in collecting my thoughts about it, I'd have no compunction in putting up there with Koestler's work, which for all its critical accolades is a bit of a slog, frankly.
Bravo.

I initially requested a copy of this book thinking it wove together tales of further history than Cold War Era Soviet Union and the second presidency of a character who is a thinly veiled take on President Trump.

It focuses on the attempts of a journalist who is hired by First Lady Lara Caine to write her biography and along the way uncovers a truth that might just save the country from a reckless and dangerous President.

I am not normally interested in anything with such a heavy emphasis on the '80s OR the Cold War but I devoured this. I think I really appreciated the insight into current day journalist Sophie's head, and the mind of Lara's past. Once Pitoniak had laid all the pieces on the board and began to move them towards a conclusion, I wasn't totally sure I knew what was happening. I think that may have been intentional, as Sophie was in the dark as well.

I won't divulge the conclusion but it had me wondering how this book would have made me feel, and how it would have been received by the world, had last fall's election gone to the other candidate. <i>Our American Friend</i> in some ways reminds me of <i>The Man in the High Castle</i>. It's a look at what might have happened, had the dice rolled another way. What lays in the past of the silent woman next to the star-spangled podium?

I'm excited to read more by Pitoniak when I get the chance.

I really liked the idea of a political thriller focused on women, as so often female thriller protagonists are pigeonholed to the domestic sphere. However, any hope for originality was dashed by how "ripped from the headlines" this book is.

I'm not opposed to using real life for inspiration, but even in the first chapter I was put off by how overtly these characters mirror the Trumps. Your mileage will vary, of course, but for me the characterization was too sloppy and prevented me from fully engaging with the text.

I could not manage to get into this book. Nothing personal against it, just that I am so tired of politics and didn't fully realize what this was alluding to. I'm sure it's a great read for someone who is not mentally exhausted, and I did enjoy what parts I skimmed.

Pitoniak has once again managed to craft an absolutely stellar novel. Quite different than their last, Our American Friend takes us into the past life of the Russian-born fictional First Lady. Part soft spy thriller, part gorgeous historical fiction, this book manages to unite these two facets in the best way.

Lara is a great character to follow, it was lovely being alongside her throughout her life. She is brave and flawed and I loved seeing how her choices impacted much larger pieces of history.

We also follow Sofie, the journalist hand-chosen by the First Lady to assist in writing her biography and maybe helping out in other ways as well. Although I loved Lara’s storyline a little bit more, I had no qualms with Sofie and how she tied in to the bigger picture.

Pitoniak is absolutely a new auto-buy author for me!
Thank you to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster, and the author for the chance to read this book for free in exchange for an honest review

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

A little bit spy novel, a little bit political thriller.

Sophie is a journalist who quits her job when Henry Caine is re-elected President. (Henry sounds a bit like our former IMPOTUS). Sophie is surprised when Lara Caine, the First Lady contacts her to write her biography.

Flashback to the 70's when Lara is growing up. Lara was born in the 70's in Russia. Her father was a member of the KGB who was stationed in Paris for a long time. How did she go from Paris to being the wife of a President?

The book goes between the 70's, 2016 and current day.

I enjoyed the book and at times some things seemed like they could be written about the former first lady. There were parts that kinda dragged on but it kept me interested.