4.5 stars ( )

Quite an interesting book. Part of the ending is obvious, the other part wasn't. ( )

Content warning for the book: war, animal killing

"It’s a spy-tech Konami code, like the combinations of commands that unlocked secret power-ups in the Nintendo games we played when we were kids. There’s a cheekiness to it, hiding a portal to the heart of the government’s secrets right there in plain sight of every adversary I’ll meet."

In the beginning of the book (before the first chapter) it mentions that the names, locations, etc, have been changed which is good to mention but it doesn't mention anywhere of the CIA reading and reviewing the book before it being published.

When you read the first chapter it seems like you may have missed something as it throws you right into it, but chapter 2 starts the backstory. Which I think is a good idea to get someone hooked on reading the book.

The author had (and still has) a very unique family and childhood which makes for an interesting book.

"Then the day after Christmas, my mother sits me down to tell me that Laura is dead. She was killed while flying home with her entire family, grandmother to infant brother, on the Pan Am flight bombed by Libyan terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland. I am eight."

"But I’m not crying to make him believe. I’m crying because I’ve lost the last friend who knows my truth."

This book is very similar to other books about the CIA (like The Unexpected Sky), but there are also some differences, like a different path taken, and more details on certain things.

Most of the book follows a timeline which makes it easy to follow. At one point it does jump forward some time, it's vague on the exact period (which is probably done on purpose). I felt like I never wanted to put the book down, and there were very few paths that I felt were filler or wanted to skip over.

"WE ARE SATISFIED WE HAVE RENDERED THE WRONG MAN.
They dropped him on a dirt road in Albania, instructing him not to look back. He suffered permanent spinal damage. He had lost sixty pounds. His wife thought he had left her and had divorced him. He shook whenever the overhead lights started to hum.
And nobody ever told him they were sorry."

"I’m overwhelmed with the sudden and unsettling understanding that I’m neck-deep in a game of make-believe. And the game is so convincing, I have no idea when it began. Or who the “I” is that’s playing it."

"It’s not always easy, keeping secrets from spies." ( )

nonfiction/CIA memoir (on audio)
one young woman's experiences prior to and after getting recruited by the CIA (names and details have been changed for obvious reasons). Suspenseful and thoughtful at the same time. The audio version is well-narrated--Recommended. ( )

I wanted to read about Amaryllis and her time in the CIA for 'research' of a fictional variety, but found her account really easy to read and very engrossing. And yes, she is actually called Amaryllis! I love that she started with her childhood, which partly formed her (positive) reasons for wanting to become a spy when her best friend was killed in the Lockerbie explosion. Her parents, an English actress from an eccentric family and an economist who travelled a lot for his work, and her scattered education across the States and in the UK seemed to build her into the type of woman who would travel to Burma undercover at eighteen to interview a female leader under house arrest and then smuggle the tape back to the BBC! All this before she even joined the CIA to become the youngest female operative at 22. I do question Amaryllis' track record of marrying men she barely knew rather than choosing between them and her job, however - at least now she can be happy, I hope, with the grandson of Robert Kennedy and a new baby!

An interesting balance between technical details, which I was looking for, and an almost spiritual accounting for her work, which I was not. Amaryllis sounds like an amazing woman and her book makes a refreshing change from all the macho memoirs from soldiers and Jason Bourne types which have flooded the market. ( )