Mila Pavlichenko was a real person, and her personal memoirs were used to write much of this book. I could end my review right here but I probably shouldn’t.

Both books of hers that I’ve read have been 5 stars, and this one is even better! The Diamond Eye is stunning, riveting, exciting, suspenseful, romantic, heartbreaking, inspiring, hopeful, and compulsively readable. Kate Quinn is turning me into a historical fiction lover. But when an old enemy from Mila's past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.īased on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever. Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC-until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper-a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kiev (now known as Kyiv), wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son-but Hitler's invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history's deadliest female sniper. Published by HarperAudio on March 29, 2022

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn