Can a spy ever really retire? Sally Sin gives up the spies life for marriage and a family. However, her husband and friends suspect that she's more than just a housewife, and her past comes back to haunt her. This is a very fun book that doesn't require a lot of thought, you just have to suspend your disbelief enough to accept the premise. It has plenty of action and enough mysteries to leave one looking forward to future books. ( )

omg, this was excellent! it was like Alias, in all the best ways. ( )

4 ½ Stars

This review is also published at http://thebookaholiccat.com

Original Sin is book one of Sally Sin series by Beth McMullen.

When Lucy met her husband four years ago she knew he was the man for her and started reevaluating her life and decided she wanted more than just traveling the world and being Sally Sin the spy, nine years was enough of that life. Now four years later, she is a happy housewife (as much as one can be) and a mother of a three-year-old called Theo. Lucy wants to have a “normal” life, but the past doesn’t forget and comes again to knock at her door.
As any good spy she has her nemesis, his name is Ian Blackford and now he literally has come back from the dead. When Lucy retired she was told certain rules to follow (we don’t exist, you never exist and so on) and that if the need arise she would be call back again to serve. Now with Blackford’s return, Lucy’s old handler Simon Still asks her to come out of retirement and help them capture him. The last thing Lucy wants is to be back to her old life, a life secret to all her friends, secret even to her husband, but when Lucy realizes her family might be at risk if she doesn’t do something, she decides (is forced) to do this job.

I liked Lucy since the first pages. She is a very easy character to connect with and to like; she was hilarious, always trying to juggle her mom duties and her spy paranoia. We see many flashbacks from her childhood and her life as a spy, this makes us understand her and know her better. As well as the secondary characters which are part of some those flashbacks.

Lucy nemesis Ian Blackford is dark and sexy; he is good spy turned bad, he was one of the best agents in USAWMD who crossed to the “dark side” and now he is a notorious illegal arms dealer.

Ian and Lucy relationship was a weird and complicate one, they are supposed to be enemies but there are some undercurrents and certain attraction that make it very interesting. Ian has kidnapped Lucy countless times, but had never hurt her. Lucy has had opportunities to kill Ian but has never done it. During Lucy’s recalls of her memories (flashback) I was hoping to read about some smexy time between these two, but it looks their “relationship” was on a more platonic level.
Sadly their relationship was a lot more interesting than Lucy and her husband Will. Will is an eco-friendly man, who cares a little bit too much for the environment and is always doing his best to protect it. Will doesn’t have much scene time, and his relationship with Lucy felt superficial, with not much in common between them, just physical intimacy. Also it was hard for me to understand a man who marries a woman knowing she is keeping many secrets, it felt as if he really didn’t care to know the person he was married with. Also I don’t see how a relationship based in lies can work, because sooner or later the truth is going to come out and then what is going to happen? Is he going to be ok with the kind of woman she was and in certain cases still has to be? Also it felt as if he is more than what he shows. I may be wrong and it was just that Lucy’s paranoia was contagious, I will have to wait and see in future books.

All the other secondary characters complemented really nice the story, they all provided something different and interesting to it. From Lucy handler Simon Still to Lucy friends Avery and Sam, and of course I cannot forget Lucy’s son Theo and the evil Black Monk… weird that I put those two almost in the same category…

Original Sin is a very entertaining book with great and funny characters. In this, her debut novel Mrs. McMullen created a very fast pace, entertaining and captivating story that would have you glue to its pages. Original Sin has a well-developed and complex plot that would have you guessing and wondering about what it is to come page after page. Some secrets are unveiled and other are just brought to the light. The end was not a cliffhanger but anyway it left me running to search when it is the next book in this series going to be available, sadly there is not information yet of a date or a title for next book. I will be stalking, pardon, following Beth McMullen from now on hopping to hear news about book 2 of Sally Sin series.

Original Sin is a funny chick-lit novel with a touch of mystery. It’s perfect for a summer read or whenever you just want to disconnect and read a funny, well-written and entertaining book.

My Verdict: 4 ½ Paws ( )

Interesting concept, but felt like it could have been done so much better and cleaner. It was interesting but I was left feeling unsatisfied overall. Almost too many ideas and side stories crammed into one short book that none of them where fully investigated. ( )

This is probably somewhere between 2.5 stars and three. It was obvious going in that this wasn't a spy story to be taken seriously (if the bright pink cover wasn't an indication, the organization, the USAWMD, is). Which is a good thing for anyone to keep in mind going into this, otherwise you're going to be sorely disappointed. Lucy Hamilton/Sally Sin is a terrible spy (even though she calls herself 'good enough'). It's only through sheer luck (and the odd taunting soft spot the primary bad guy must have for her) that she is still alive. She talked about being paranoid, but there were several suspicious people and occurrences that she simply let go and was never even curious about (which was actually pointed out to her as a flaw early in the book). She was never stealthy, pretty clueless as to how to handle most situations and assailants, and for some reason never had or held onto her gun (even when she was setting up a guy in her apartment, she left her gun in her bedside drawer!).

Most of the story is flashbacks of Sally's heyday as a USAWMD agent. While they are is necessary to set up the players in the present day story, there wasn't any forward movement until halfway through the book. They were also sort of a jumbled mess. She'd jump from present day to flashback, it might finish or there could be a chapter break for no apparent reason before it continues, or it could go back to the present before going back to finish the flashback. It was sometimes confusing to keep up with where the story was going. There were also a few frustrating flashbacks that really served no purpose or didn't go anywhere. And a couple that were leading up to an entirely different storyline that, it turns out, will be the mystery at the core of the next book. Which is rather annoying since they were in the middle of this book.

The book was somewhere between entertaining and tedious. Sally could be funny at times and there were some points where she would interact with other people and there would be warmth and emotion (usually with her kid, Theo). Otherwise, I just couldn't connect with her. Now, in this book that could actually be a conscious decision by McMullen (we never even find out her real name, Sally is her code name and Lucy was her chosen new identity when she quit the agency), but by the end I really didn't see this as being intentional. Still, I'll read the next book when it comes out. ( )