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This would have been my runner-up for best non-fiction read in 2022. I hesitate to say that I enjoyed this biography of Prince Philip's Greek background. It was rather dry reading and seemed to be more about the (short) history of the Greek monarchy as it relied extensively on Greek archival material. However, I felt that it had the missing pieces of Philip's background. The palace spin on Philip was that he was raised by his English grandmother and English uncles (particularly Dickie Mountbatten) and never really connected with his Greek heritage. But the actions taken by Philip's grandmother were all done with the approval of Philip's father Andrew, who loved Greece but had grown disillusioned in exile. He could have chosen to have his only son educated in Greek schools, but he chose French and English schools instead, possibly because of his bitterness towards the country that rejected him. The Hugo Vickers biography of Princess Alice, mother of Philip, was a lot more extensive, but this filled in the gaps of her letters where she expressed a desire to see her son become King of the Hellenes when Andrew's brothers and nephews failed to provide a male heir. If not for the birth of ex-king Constantine II, we may have had King Philipos of the Hellenes.

This gets my vote for the best fiction book I read in 2022. What really impressed me, as a native of Chicago, was how well the city was represented. The author described how Aki would go to work at the Newberry Library or visit a friend working at the Curtiss Candy Company in Streeterville and the descriptions lined up with the landmarks I already knew. You could tell the author had done their research.

What I did not know was that there was the history of Japanese-Americans being forcibly relocated to Chicago after their release from internment camps. I knew how the American government forced Japanese immigrants and their American-born children into camps on the West Coast, but I didn't know that many of them resettled in Chicago when they weren't allowed to return to their homes. So this book taught me something new about my city.

The characters were well-developed, the mystery unraveled at a steady pace, and the ending was not at all what I expected. I probably read 95% of this in one shot because I could not put it down. A second book in the series is due to be published in 2023 and I look forward to the continuation of Aki's story.