Review: Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy

Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy by Elizabeth Kiem

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The Cold War is still raging as Marina trains to become a ballerina in the Soviet Union. She knows it is possible, because her mother, Sveta, is the Soviet Union’s prima ballerina. Unfortunately, her mother has the gift of sight and when she attempts to expose a terrible state secret she disappears. Marina and her father flee to Brooklyn and she wants to reestablish herself as a ballerina by attending Juilliard. She is assigned a partner named Sergei, and her father believes he will be their contact in regards to the secret his wife shared with him.

But Marina also has the gift of sight and after “seeing” her father’s murder she must come to terms with the fact that leaving the Soviet Union does not make you automatically safe. Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy is full of espionage and intrigue. Marina is thrown into the rolls of traitor and spy due to the actions of her parents, and she must unravel the secrets they have hidden even from her in order to save herself and hopefully her parents. Kiem takes the 1980’s Cold War era with the advancing technology and brings it to readers in the 21st century. Many young readers only know of the USSR from history books and what better way to learn many common actions then through a fictional story of espionage. After reading Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy, I see many people picking up additional spy novels to devoir.




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