received an ARC from netgalley, became suspicious of the author when he spent pages telling me about a man doing drugs and drinking through his daughter's 6th birthday trip to disneyworld then tried to convince me that the man was a doting father. more suspicions arose while reading and i DNF when the author stated point blank that covid-19 escaped from a us-funded biolab in china. it's a shame bc he's an engaging writer.

update: i finished the book because i couldn't look away, and in the course of the rest of it the author tries to convince you that america started the war in ukraine, that yanukovych was a democratically elected ruler, that assad was a good guy and preferable to any other government, and that the war in ukraine is over and america lost. i can't get over these politics, which seem to be coming from another reality.