{"id":2601,"date":"2021-06-01T20:23:40","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T20:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2601"},"modified":"2023-04-02T23:14:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T23:14:45","slug":"our-american-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2601","title":{"rendered":"Our American Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Journalist Sofie Morse is puzzled when U.S. First Lady Lara Caine, who at first appears to resemble Melania Trump\u2014Eastern-European former model, cold demeanor, revolting husband\u2014asks Sofie to write her biography. Sofie grows more bemused when interviews for the book reveal intimate details of Lara\u2019s shocking history, a backstory that the president\u2019s devotees won\u2019t like at all. The tale woven by the First Lady is both a romance and a political drama that takes readers from Moscow to Paris and then New York, as Lara grows from dutiful Russian child to rebellious teenager, becoming forever changed by powerful love with a Soviet resistor while the regime he loathes crumbles. In the present day, Sofie and her husband are dragged into peril themselves as the interviews play out, with Lara\u2019s family in the past and Sofie\u2019s in the present embodying Churchill\u2019s description of Russia as \u201ca riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.\u201d After Pitoniak\u2019s (<em>Necessary People<\/em>, 2019) <strong>absorbing, immersive thriller<\/strong>, readers who enjoyed the romantic side of the work should try Paullina Simons\u2019s The Girl in Times Square, while those who liked the dysfunctional Russian family aspect should be steered toward Zhanna Slor\u2019s <em>At the End of the World, Turn Left<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journalist Sofie Morse is puzzled when U.S. First Lady Lara Caine, who at first appears to resemble Melania Trump\u2014Eastern-European former model, cold demeanor, revolting husband\u2014asks Sofie to write her biography.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[81,164,51],"class_list":["post-2601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-espionage","tag-star","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/American-Friend-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/American-Friend-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}