Newlywed Ariel Pryce is in Lisbon with her husband. When she wakes up and finds him gone without even leaving a note, the simple business trip quickly becomes a nightmare. Knowing something is wrong, Ariel contacts first the Lisbon police and then the American Embassy. But no one seems to be able to help her and she isn’t sure they even believe her. As time passes, Ariel becomes increasingly desperate and she turns to the one person she wants to avoid the most.

Two Nights in Lisbon is a taut, suspenseful, and well-written mystery. The tension never lets up, the revelations are unexpected, and the dialogue is crisp. The characters are well-drawn and Ariel stands out as a woman who is adept, strong, and determined. All in all, this book is clever, stylish, and entertaining. It was a great way to start my summer reading and I’m looking forward to reading Mr Pavone’s previous books as well.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book for review.

My first by this author. I really liked this book - intrigue, mysterious people with new names, great setting. Ariel's character needed a little work. I appreciate what she was trying to represent, but without giving any spoilers, it was a little too much of men who were attracted to her.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC - I will definitely recommend this one.

The blurb sounds like the plot of an old Audrey Hepburn movie I loved. It's not that, at all. I have been on a mission to try new authors and books that have something different to offer. I am a Romance, Romantic-Suspense fan, but occasionally I want a real mystery to solve, and this is my first Chris Pavone book. The left of center author has crafted a pretty good mystery tale. Too bad there is about an extra 100 pages on his personal prejudices and biases woven into it. He has a rather sartorial view of life. If you can get past all that, I suggest skim reading, this is a great mystery. A lot of people will love this book. Me, not so much.

Our heroine, Ariel Pryce, is a woman who has been underestimated, dismissed and victimized due to her beauty and just being a woman, all her life. She has taken steps to empower herself and is nobody's victim. When she wakes up alone in a hotel room in Lisbon, her husband of 6 months, John, missing, Ariel begins a journey to take back the power stolen from her long ago. No one takes her seriously at first, but her husband is missing. Then the ramson of 3 million euros is demanded, now she has everyone's attention, the Lisbon police, the US Embassy and the CIA.

Where is she going to get 3 million euros? She owns a small bookstore in a small unfashionable seaside town and a farm that barely covers expenses. She and her husband, a business consultant, don't have that kind of money. But Ariel knows who does and they will pay.

My thanks to MCD, Publisher, and Chris Pavone, author, for providing a complimentary digital Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this novel via NetGalley. This is my fair, honest and personal review. All opinions are mine alone and were not biased in any way.

This was a great read with great pacing, great characters, and a great storyline that maintains its mystique up to the end. A great plot that would be a great beach read.

This book is trying to be super woke, and I am not a fan. Why isn’t it made clear in the description this is a political thriller? Why are all men bad? (According to this female main character created by a male?) Why is it so anti-American? This book is going to alienate half of the potential audience.

If I could, I'd give 4.5 stars as this is definitely one of my favorites from 2022 so far.

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. At first I thought it was going to be pretty straightforward, but the plot ended up being more complex and nuanced than I expected. I wasn't able to predict every twist and turn and it kept me engaged throughout.

As complex as it is, I could see this story happening in some version in our current political landscape. It proposes a way to take down a serial abuser without the involvement of the often times lacking justice system. It's probably not very realistic, but it's close enough to realism that I really enjoyed it. It's a nice revenge plot that doesn't involve violence, rather stategy, outmaneuvering your enemy, and understanding of the law around NDAs.

If you're a powerful man that's inherited money, opportunity, and power without ever having to face consequences for your actions, you probably won't like this one.

I devoured Chris Pavone’s Two Nights in Lisbon. It is an intricate and well crafted book. It takes a while to put all the pieces together. Stunning!

Absolutely adored "Two Nights in Lisbon", a gripping story that one can't out down. I can highly recommend this book as a highlight of 2022 reading!

What a fun thriller! Ariel has accompanied her husband on a business trip to Lisbon and now he’s missing. But no one will listen to her.

It took a while for me to get into the story
but once it hit its stride it was a fantastic and entertaining read. I didn’t know who to believe or who to cheer for and that’s just the kind of thriller I enjoy. It kept me guessing till the ending, which was not obvious.

I enjoyed the setting of Lisbon along with all the secondary characters following Ariel. Definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a fun and fast thriller!

Chris Pavone's excellent "Two Days In Provone" defines the term page turner. Beautifully plotted, a complex multi faceted heroine, and a corker of an ending. This is also the first book that I've read that's set in Portugal which is a great change from the usual foreign settings such as France or Italy. I hope "Two" becomes to bet one of the most talked about books of this summer.

The level of intrigue that pulled me into this novel and kept me turning pages was next level. The plot is brilliant, told through different points of view (which I really enjoy). Additionally, there were twists throughout the novel that kept me hooked. I couldn’t put this down.

There were absolutely some very important topics discussed throughout, such as, sexual violence and victimization. I feel like there is a fine line between too vague and too much when it comes to these topics, but I felt this book had just enough discussion about it (for me)!

This was my first read by this author but I thoroughly enjoyed it so it will not be my last. Will definitely be recommending this to my friends who I think would enjoy this as well!

Two Nights in Lisbon had a bit of a slow start for me but when the action started, I could not put it down. Ariel Pryce wakes up in a Lisbon hotel room to find her husband, John, gone. The story takes us not only through the steps Ariel has to go through to find help for her husband but also into Ariel's past. While the story is a slow burn, the ending is worth it. So worth it.

Kept me guessing until the surprise ending...and then another surprise on the very last page. New to me author but I'll check other books out now. Got a very small glimpse of Portugal in this one.

It sounded interesting.

But wow. Ariel is the worst.

“Ariel has a hard time overlooking the dislikable parts of people…”

This is the understatement of the year.

She is cynical about everyone and everything.

It was hard to tell what was inserted as an aspect of Ariel’s character or the author’s own beliefs on the state and functioning of the world, but either way, it was over-the-top.


Just Wow.

I know this section is long but I have included this large body of evidence in this review to prove to you how vast and deep these themes go in this book.

But first, keep it all in light of this ironic and comical statement as you go:

“One of the ways that Ariel has been extra-cautious in her life has been talking to her son about men. She never wanted to sound too negative, too hostile. She doesn’t want George to grow up thinking that his mother hates all men…”

Here we go, everyone. Buckle up.

Here you will find the “sparkling prose and razor-sharp insights” that Goodreads proclaims:


“Chivalry can be just another form of hostility. Chivalry can be the weapon itself.”

“As if the mere fact that something is traditional makes it admirable, or defensible. The same exact justification has been used for pretty much all the injustice in the history of the world.”

“She has plenty of firsthand experience with the insidious, corrosive effects of fetishizing tradition.”

“She returns her gaze to Moniz, who’s also what she’d expect to find in a police station, the standard off-the-rack model of cop— mid-forties, thinning hair compensated for with bushy mustache, a bulky frame with twenty extra pounds that sit in the front of his belly, distended in a bulge at the beltline, the way some men carry their middle age and their beer, as if six months pregnant.”

“Ariel doesn’t like this, appealing to the woman, it feels so feeble, so reductionist.”

“American culture, American commerce, American lies, everywhere.”

“Persephone was behind the register, engrossed in a postapocalyptic fantasy novel, a genre that was somehow related to her oft-mentioned studies in grad school, that golden moment when everything was still possible, when her future looked so bright. But Persephone was beginning to suspect that it had been a false glow on the horizon, not the rising sun of a bright new day, just the remnants of a dying bonfire of oversold, overpriced, undervalued educational achievements that turn out to be almost meaningless on the job market, after twenty straight years of full-time schooling interspersed with hourly jobs in retail, folding shirts, punching buttons on cash registers.”

“…a square-jawed man wearing a golf shirt under a fleece vest breast-emblazoned with Excalibur Capital, a crimson HBS baseball cap, and a big gleaming wristwatch, making sure everyone could see in one glance who he was— mega-successful finance bro.”

“drenching everything in his toxic masculinity.”

“In the past few years, this steroidal type of truck had become the most popular vehicle in town. It seems like every aggressive tailgater, every obnoxious cut-offer, every impatient red-light jumper is now behind the wheel of one of these monsters, looming up behind her, headlights in her eyes, menacing everyone on the road with their suspension lifts and oversize wheels and aftermarket mufflers, their Power Stroke stenciling on the side.”

“Everything about this vehicle looked like a schoolyard bully, even the bumper stickers— the glowering visage of the New England Patriots, the implicit challenge of BLUE LIVES MATTER, the bizarre armed eagle of the NRA.”

“He was a so-called patriot, you knew it because he said so, it was even his favorite football team.”

“Ariel has been surprised by the broad prevalence of Brazilian people, and the influence of Brazilian culture, here in Lisbon, exhibiting a sort of reverse colonialism that she found heartwarming, and hopeful.”

“Men often try to reframe temper as hysteria, to recast righteousness as overreaction, as hypersensitivity, as irrationality.”

“It’s the tone that a man uses when he thinks he’s being the reasonable one. A tone that transcends generations, cultures, languages. The universal tone of condescension.”

“At least one in ten married women have been raped by their husbands.”

“Of everything that Ariel resented about her mom— there was plenty— this was perhaps the ultimate: that Ariel might have internalized something malignant from her mother’s spinelessness, her unwillingness to tell men anything that they did not want to hear.”

“Jerry embraced all the clichés of the struggling small-town single-shingle barrister, complete with failed marriage, irresponsible nutrition, and functional alcoholism.”

“One of the many manipulations available to men like him, created by men like him for the benefit of men like him, the tax structure and capital gains and mortgage-interest deductions, marriage and religion and capitalism and so-called representative democracy, all constructed so men like him could be not only the players but the house as well, everything about the game fixed in their favor, with not only backup schemes but also backups to the backups, and no way for them to lose, not at this game they invented called America.”

“Detective Carolina Santos looks around the wood-paneled walls hung with gilt-framed oil paintings: a hunting scene, a whaling boat in action, farmers tending an orchard. All pictures of men in the process of exploiting the earth. She sighs at the obviousness of it.”

“Shawn Jefferson put no trust whatsoever in any organization that gave white men guns and permission to use them.”

“… there’s a large segment of the male population whose first instinct, always, is to assign blame to someone else— whoever happens to be nearest, or femalest.”

“Ariel had assumed that Santos would be a natural ally, despite plenty of evidence that not all women believed in female solidarity, or agreed on what it might mean. Ariel was reminded of this every Election Day.”


Are you tired of it yet?

Exactly.

So why would you read this book?


Other Comments/Questions

- Trigger warning: This book is significantly based around sexual assault that Ariel experienced, including rape.

- I couldn’t decide if the Lisbon police were good at their jobs or if they were the police version of the bandits on Home Alone.

- I learned that a ‘kleptocrat’ is a ruler who uses political power to steal his or her country's resources and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I’m pretty sure Ariel views every single political leader this way.

- After 40% of the book I still had no concept of what her husband was like so at that point I wasn’t really sure if I cared that he was kidnapped.

- She calls her employee, who is named Persephone, by the nickname ‘P.’ Seems less than ideal.

- Ariel says that ‘a large part of being an actor was being hyperobservant.’ Is this true? It doesn’t seem true.

- They have no qualms with throwing their phones in the trash. It gives me anxiety just thinking about that.

- The author has them text in this format- “WHERE R U?’- which is a pet peeve of mine. It’s harder to type in all caps and use one letter abbreviations than just typing out the word.

- I had most of the things figured out early on.

- There was a lot of swearing.


Conclusion

If you could stomach the laundry list of eye-rolling quotes above, then sure, maybe you should try this one.

But if you find the constant negativity and cynicism annoying like I did, pass on this one. The plot was interesting but had terrible execution.

I’ve never read this author before so I have no idea if this type of commentary within his books is common or not, but I probably won’t be reading any more of his books.

**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone
Two Nights in Lisbon is the first novel that I read by Chris Pavone. It is an intriguing novel that leads you on a fast-paced chase in Lisbon.
When Ariel Pryce, a newly married forty-year-old, wakes up in her hotel room in Lisbon, she discovers her husband missing. Was he kidnapped? Did he leave on his own free will? Is he just off the grid and returning later? Ariel is so worried about his disappearance, that she immediately notifies the local police. They are skeptical about her story and the fact that she is reporting her husband John missing although it is not even twenty-four hours since his disappearance. When Ariel doesn’t get any help from the local police, she resorts to going to the US Embassy. Eventually, the FBI and the CIA are all involved.
When Ariel does receive a ransom note for an extremely large sum of money, she has to contact a person from her past that she holds a large secret about. This is a powerful and dangerous person that could bring her down.
The timeline of the book is mostly over a three-day period, hour by hour. I felt the book moved quickly in the beginning but slowed down in the middle. The last part of the book flew. The author had me guessing who to believe especially after the ransom was paid. There were lots of twists and turns that definitely kept the pages turning at the end. I was very surprised by the ending.
Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

This book was so good! I want to see more from this author in the future!! I couldn't put this book down. What a page turner!!!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was very excited to read 'Two Nights in Lisbon', but unfortunately this novel just wasn't for me.
I liked the mystery and how intriguing it was, but I found the writing too repetitive and not engaging enough to keep me interested. The pacing of the novel was extremely slow for a thriller and I thought the main character was very flat and boring which made it a very disappointing read for me.

I read a few chapters and just couldn’t get into this book. I don’t like to leave 1 star reviews for not finishing so I gave it a 2 just because.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

3.5 Stars / 5.0

I was very excited to be given the opportunity to read and review and advanced copy of Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone. The premise is intriguing and holds lots of promise. A recently married couple travels together to Lisbon on a business trip for the husband. One morning the wife awakes to an empty hotel suite. She checks the restaurant where they eat breakfast and checks with the staff and no one has seen her husband. He is missing. Eventual security camera footage shows him leaving the hotel in the early morning hours and getting in a car. And then the ransom demands arrive.

Sadly the promise of what could be with this book outshone what is. I found the first half or more of the book to be not very engaging. I didn't care about the characters. I was curious about what happened to John, the husband, as well as the snippets of Ariel's past that were revealed. I found it hard to engage with the book. The single thing that kept me going was to see the ending, and understand the horrible past that Ariel experienced, and who the powerful mystery man is. As her story was revealed I did find myself caring more about Ariel and the pains and scars she carries from that trauma. There was a final twist to the ending that was interesting, although not enough to make up for the shortfalls of the first half.

This is my opinion. People have different experiences and enjoy different books when reading. There are plenty of reviews that I have seen that are glowing for the book.

Another winner for Chris Pavone. If you like spy thrillers set in Europe but with American characters, this one is for you. Fast paced from beginning to the end.