SPOILER ALERT: The basic premise (which is a surprise at several points) of Karen Cleveland’s Need to Know is laid out here; so if you want total surprise, stop reading! But I’m not giving away the BFD ending which is designed to be a real shocker, so if you don’t mind reading a plot outline, have at it!

I had read some of the hype about this book (optioned as a film with Charlize Theron, so my image of protagonist Vivian Miller was of Charlize), so I was pleased to get an advance copy of this book from Random House/Ballantine and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. As the story begins, we meet Vivian Miller (Charlize), a super-dedicated CIA counterintelligence analyst who has been working for years on a project that, if successful, will uncover the identities of people living in the U.S. as members of Russian sleeper cells. She has developed this system to identify the people who appear to be normal residents of the U.S., but who are actually working as Russian agents.

Vivian’s life has gotten complicated as she and her husband Matt and their four children live the lifestyle of a middle-class couple, complete with a big mortgage and some medical problems for one of their kids that guarantee they can’t just walk away from her job on a whim. One day, while she is online accessing the computer of someone she thinks may be a Russian operative, Vivian stumbles on a secret file that contains information about deep-cover agents in the U.S. As she scrolls through the photos of the agents assigned to the suspected handler, she is stunned to see her husband Matt’s photo. She is torn about what to do – if she turns him in, her job will be over, her kids will be devastated, and everything that matters to her will be gone. Should she confront Matt? Maybe tell her boss? Or tell her trusted friend who works with her on the special project, FBI Agent Omar?

She seems to be faced with impossible choices. She starts looking back at her entire relationship with Matt – how they “met cute,” fell in love, got married, had kids, lived together for a decade – is it possible she is wrong, her life’s work of developing a method to identify the sleeper agents a failure?

I really enjoyed the process of reading this, and it was pretty much all-engrossing. But it required a bit of willing suspension of disbelief, because this genius woman seemed to keep making some dumb decisions. But then, I’d think, “Who knows what I’d do in her situation?”

Good plotting, good character development, good escapist entertainment. More than a bit unsettling, TBH. Just like you sometimes find out the seemingly normal guy down the block is a serial killer, you might have a member of a sleeper cell in the neighborhood, coaching your kid’s soccer team. Four stars.

This book demands your attention at the 1st page turn and that's it... You can't put it down! Very well written!

Any mother can sympathize with Vivian Miller. Her four children are the mainspring of her joy, pride, and life. Keeping up with their needs and the demands of a stressful position as a CIA intelligence analyst on the Russian desk means that she needs someone to take up the slack when she is at work; someone on whom she can rely. That is where Matt Miller, her husband, comes in. He fills all the gaps and makes the family home function like a well-oiled machine. Life is good, and things are running smoothly, right up the day she learns that she has been sleeping with the enemy.

“Need to Know” brims with the mixture of love, stress, and responsibilities that all modern households face, but then adds blackmail, espionage, and betrayal. The pace is fast; the characters are evocative and all too human. As the denouement comes you relax, it's a happy ending, right? And then comes the twist at the end. I recommend this book to those enjoy cloak and dagger tales of the Cold War style.

Random House Books and NetGalley provided an advance digital copy for this review.

This is the most terrifying book I have read in a long time. It is completely realistic and creates an environment of fear and desperation. In the world of espionage no one can be trusted. The question is what would you do to protect your family? I had my heart in my throat for most of the book. Even at the end, masks continue to slide. Most of the characters are very real. The style of writing is sparse, which supports the story well. Perhaps everyone involved in some form of espionage develops a different world view which must be reconciled with the.. demands of their human relationships. Once you identity with the characters in this book, you are in for a gut-wrenching ride.

Decent book but I saw the twist at the end coming. Also very similar to The Americans tv series.

Need to Know by Karen Cleveland is a page turner for sure. I think the author did a wonderful job crafting a tense thriller. The characters were well rounded with understandable and sympathetic motivations. I loved that the author flipped between the past and the present. A lot of the past interactions between Matt and Vivian had an insidious quality to them. What seemed to be the actions of a supportive husband came off sinister once you stared questioning his motivations.

I think the author did a great job in keeping the reader guessing as to whether Matt could be trusted. There always seemed to be little kernels of doubt sprinkled throughout. I think it was believable that Vivian continually gave him the benefit of the doubt. It was annoying to be sure, and Vivian made some truly frustrating decisions. Of course, if she had done the right thing from the beginning, there would be no book. I was able to get past it because the author explored how 10 years of marriage and family weighed on her decisions.

As for the ending, all I can say is: whew!  I was expecting it, but I was still caught off guard. Loved this book.

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An well-written and enjoyable story about the relationship and developing friendship between an old man and a young girl - how each learns and gains from the other, and how they welcome an old woman into their lives as well.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book based on the description. However, from the outset, I was intrigued by the first person voice of our heroine. In pursuit of her next career move, she breaks into a Russian computer and stumbles across a picture she never wanted to see.
From that moment on, she makes one bad decision after another, all leading up to a pretty unbelievable crescendo. The ending strains credulity some although it might work well for a movie.
The husband is a shit, and God knows why his wife puts up with him or has iota of trust in him. The finale is a little heartbreaking but it is a little tough to have lots of sympathy for most of the characters,
I did read it quickly and she does have moments of insight, just no where near enough of them.

Turns out there's no such thing as a perfect man. But CIA analyst Viv, the intrepid protagonist of this novel, is gonna have to really learn that lesson and not the easy way either when her adoring spouse turned out to have a doozy of a dark past sort of secret. That's the basic premise in this popcorn thriller and for what it is, it works quite nicely. Personally, I'm not a huge spy genre fan, but I do enjoy thrillers and this is for the most part pretty thrilling, it's fast paced, has some twists and turns, some genuinely well written anxiety. Plus the author actually is a CIA analyst, so that's a reliable primary source for details, certainly. It's just that the thing is...this seems more of a novel about family and having kids and less about spies. In fact, if one is to look for a moral within these pages it would certainly be something along the lines of operatives with families make for unreliable operatives. Apparently love makes all the morals, rules and ethics go right out of the window. And Vivian isn't just in love, she's also determined to reproduce at a rate normally found on TLC's reality programming, which makes her all the more of a target. But then, of course, her momzilla instincts come into play and she'll do whatever it takes...and that's how the narrative unfolds. Viv making choices, Viv questioning her dearly beloved's loyalties, Viv being a supermom. And then, just when you thought it was all resolved and tied up neatly with a bow, there's one last stab. Because it's a thriller, after all. Oh Viv, you tried to do what's right. So anyway, that's about all you need to know about this book...it's a movie waiting to roll. Depending on the cast it might even be an A movie. I can just see Reese Witherspoon or someone similar all over this with a tagline like She's CIA analyst second and mother first. How far will she go to protect her family? Who do you trust when your entire life is based on deceit? Something like that. So yeah, total popcorn fare, but plenty entertaining and a quick read. Thanks Netgalley.

"Need to Know" is a gripping spy story, told from an interesting perspective. Vivian is an analyst at the CIA when she opens a file that reveals a secret that would shake her world to its very core. Shown through a mixture of current narrative and flashbacks that draw the reader in from the first chapter, Ms. Cleveland does an excellent job of making the shadowy world of counterintelligence understandable, engaging, and very plausible. Four stars.

Need to Know: A Novel by [Cleveland, Karen]

I thought this was great fun.

Review copy provided by publisher.

I'm hooked! You have yourself a new fan!! I'll patiently wait on anything else you write, books, poems, short stories, you name it! Well done Karen! It was honor to read your masterpiece.

Wow. An amazingly tight page-turner. I'll be shocked if this isn't a motion picture within a year.

Need To Know is the first book by Karen Cleveland so I wasn't sure what to expect. What I found was a well written suspense/thriller. It is a standalone. There is violence.

The book blurb adequately describes the storyline so I'm not going to repeat all of that info here. The storyline is a different take on sleeper cells and the people investigating them. This was well written for a debut novel and the author impressed me with her ability to create the moral dilemma the main characters faced. The characters are multidimensional and I couldn't help but relate to them. As usual, everything and everyone is not as it seems. This book has plenty of twists, turns, and surprises...right up to the very end. It is rare that a book surprises me all the way up to the last line. She left me wanting to know more.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and Random House/Ballentine. I chose to write a review for other readers. I look forward to reading more from this author.

This is an interesting novel. I can see where Charlize will make a credible star of the story. Thanks, NetGalley for the ARC.

I received an advance ebook copy from Netgalley.

Other reviewers have provided detailed synopses (as well as a few spoilers) so I won't repeat their efforts here. Suffice it to say that the protagonist, a CIA analyst, is confronted with an impossible dilemma. Does she compromise everything she believes in to save what she loves most, or does she throw away her integrity with no guarantee that by doing so, her troubles will be over?

I do not recommend starting to read this book late at night....

Lee Child was right and thanks to a rainy Sunday afternoon, I read the whole thing in one sitting this afternoon as I kept "needing to know" what was going to happen next.

This is quite a unique spy story in that there is *almost* no blood and guts or violence in the book and all the suspense is in the characters interactions as they struggle with loyalty to family and to country.

The style of writing consists of a lot of short sentences and a lot of descriptive language going into quite a lot of detail about the scenes which was initially distracting as I started the book but I was able to get past this and just settle down into the storyline.

The ending was a little bit of a surprise but I suspected something similar might be the case and so I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Need to Know is a gripping novel about the dangers of world espionage. It is also about ethics and the consequences of decisions. The main character, Vivian, works for the government hunting terrorist/spy cells. She is married and lives a normal life raising four children. One day she learns of her husband’s ties to a Russian cell and her whole life is threatened. Should she follow government mandates or save her family? The story has may twists and shows how illusive truth can be.
It is a great read and one that had me unable to put it down toward the midpoint of the book. I highly recommend it for its look into the dangers of the world of counter-intelligence.

Finally a book that kept me wanting to know what comes next. The guilty/not guilty, did he/didn't he by the wife. Can she trust him? Of course... or maybe not. Loved it!

Wife: CIA, Husband: is he a Russian spy? What should she do? Turn him in and ruin their family? Break her oath to her country? Most of the book is spent trying to explore the different options and some of the options are of the type that "it seemed like a good idea at the time" but maybe not so later on.

There were a few things that didn't quite meet reality, but the rest was so good that I could overlook the little things. Definitely a great read and I read it long into the night.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. I will be looking for more from this author. Well done.

A real page turner, exciting and full of suspense. I like the way the author put me right inside of Vivian's heart and mind as she struggles with her personal choices of career or family, and her grasping at the truth about her marriage. I hope the story doesn't end here, would love to continue on with Vivian, her family and career choices.