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.

It gets high marks for that alone.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. Overall, The Diamond Eye thrills its readers and gives them a heroine worth rooting for. The Diamond Eye combines a war narrative with an assassination plot and Mila’s domestic concerns (and the romance, which is a very nice bonus). Warm, tough, playful, heartbroken and uncompromising, sometimes all at the same time, she is a wonderful person to follow around.

Her truest love is Slavka, and this stays consistent throughout the novel. I am not entirely sure if Mila’s epic love affair with Kostia, a fellow soldier who serves as her partner in the field, is a hundred percent true to life, but Quinn definitely makes him feel like a part of Mila’s emotional landscape. The story moves from war-torn Russia to the elegance and glitz of postwar America. There’s a lot of action and an intriguing spy plot that definitely works well. Quinn does well blending fact into fiction, and the brew is pretty entertaining. I do know that Mila’s friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt was the real deal, and it’s quite a highlight of the book. A difficult relationship with her mother pops into frame, as does a nervy, unsettled goodwill visit to America that feels ripped out of today’s headlines. The Diamond Eye tracks Mila’s determination to learn how to shoot alongside her life as a single mother trying to deal with her divorce and parent her son, Rostislav (Slavka). She was so good at her job, she earned the nickname “Lady Death.” Lyundmila was an infamously deadly Soviet sniper (incidentally, born in Kiyv) who is credited with killing over 300 Nazis during World War II. The Diamond Eye is an excellent fictionalized retelling of the life of the legendary Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko (called Mila in the book).

The diamond eye by kate quinn