Review by Booklist Review
Working for a covert British task force after losing her job at MI6, Eve Polastri identifies and confronts an MI5 director who has been hiding signs of great wealth. Fearing that his treason will be revealed, he admits to working for a shadowy international organization, the Twelve, which plans to remake society; then he disappears and is believed to have been killed, Eve surmises, by the assassin known as Villanelle. So Eve goes after Villanelle (Russian Oxana Vorontsova, who has taken the code name of her favorite scent), as the obsessive relationship between the two women deepens. Nonstop action moves between London, Venice, Paris, Moscow, and the Swiss Alps, as the two women track each other, and amoral Villanelle continues her murderous ways. Terrified by events in Moscow, Eve opts to give up the spy business for a normal life with husband Niko but instead finds herself facing a dreadful decision in a face-to-face meeting with Villanelle. Jennings provides plenty of spycraft and scenic and sensual atmosphere laced with betrayal in this adrenaline-fueled sequel to Killing Eve: Codename Villanelle (2018), the book that spawned the BBC America series.--Michele Leber Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Jennings's pallid second thriller featuring British intelligence agent Eve Polastri and her arch-nemesis, Villanelle (after 2018's Codename Villanelle), lacks the appeal of the BBC America TV series Killing Eve based on the earlier book. Eve once worked for MI5, where she identified a pattern to assassinations committed by a woman who had targeted "prominent figures in politics and organized crime." Her efforts to prevent another murder were blocked by a superior, Dennis Cradle, and led to her dismissal. Eve finds a place with MI6, and tricks the traitorous Cradle into a meeting, where she offers him a deal in exchange for information about those who persuaded him to work for Russian interests. Cradle, with the help of Villanelle, turns the tables on Eve, setting off a predictable cat-and-mouse game. Eve gets on the trail of a shadowy Russian cabal, but the focus, again, is on her love-hate relationship with her rival. Anyone familiar with standard genre tropes, such as the spy's significant other who demands a choice between work and family, will find them in droves. Still, many fans of the TV series will want to check this one out. Agent: Jason Bartholomew, BKS Agency (U.K.). (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Eve Polastri continues to hunt her deadly prey in this sequel to Codename Villanelle (2018).When last we left the woman formerly known as Oxana Vorontsova, she was watching a fashion show in Paris and thinking about killing her lover while the British agent determined to find this assassin was sitting down to a cup of tea with her long-suffering husband. Soon, though, Eve will be traveling the globe, one step behind the elusive Villanelle. This slender novella has many of the same satisfactions as the first installment in this seriesthe basis for the BBC America series. This time, though, it's Eve who gets to experience luxuries most of don't even know enough to dream about. In Venice, this solidly middle-class Englishwoman gets a taste for the finer things as she becomes ever more obsessed with Villanelle. And the action is brisk. But this book has the same shortcomings as its predecessor, tooas well as some new ones. Villanelle's interest in her pursuer is easy to understand; getting inside Eve's head is a matter of survival but also a source of entertainment for this psychopath. The source of Eve's obsession remains obscure, though. She has professional and personal motives for stopping Villanelle, but why is it so easy for her to abandon her comfortable life with an adoring husband? Eve is ostensibly the more human character, but she's a cypher. And Jennings' use of sexuality as a character trait begins to feel uncomfortable. Not only does Villanelle's attraction to women start to seem like an aspect of her deviance, but the erotic charge Villanelle inspires in Eve seems to signal her own turn toward darkness. And the gay neo-Nazi who is one of Villanelle's targets might resemble a well-known figure on the alt-right, but that doesn't make him any less cartoonish, nor the manner of his death less disturbing.Fast-paced, underdeveloped, and occasionally problematic. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
