Code Name Verity

I'm a sucker for WWII books.  I had heard about Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein from a couple people so I put it on my wish list and got it for my birthday.  I took it with us on vacation and started after I finished Black & Blue.  It was soo hard to get into.  I read it for two days on vacation and then it sat for over a week when I got home and then I picked it up again for a couple pages on Thursday night, read a few chapters on Friday and then finished a big chunk of it on Saturday.  I was really hoping to be hooked from the get go but that just wasn't the case.  I will say, that I found the second half / last third of the book to fly by and that seems to be the consensus from other reviews on goodreads.  So, if you do pick it up, give it a shot.  Kind of like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, if you can get through the first 100 pages,  it will be a good story. 

Description:  I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team. 

So, it sounds good, right? It is good.  The parts that dragged for me were the in depth parts about planes and types of planes and flying and paths and stuff like that.  But when Queenie was giving her accounts or it was 'real' time or when the second narrator is doing their part.  It was much better.  The details about the flights? I had to fight through them.  The author even says she wrote this book about planes for pilots so there is a lot of detail.  Not to let it scare you away because there is a GOOD story with a great friendship and so many connections that WORK that makes it a great WWII story.

It focuses on Queenie's, captured by the Ormaie Gestapo after parachuting into France, friendship with Maddie.  Queenie is tasked with telling the Gestapo everything she knows through her position as a second officer or something or other (i'm telling you those details I skimmed over because I was getting bogged down and I still can't tell you exactly what her position was but let's say it was in Intelligence because that is true).  She is an incredible storyteller and she uses it to buy more time before they decide to execute her.

There is a lot about British women involvement in WWII and the French Resistance.  I found all of those things interesting as well as the secret missions and how people came together to collaborate against the Gestapo and how the organized themselves to not get caught.

If you are in a rut, this might not be the best as I think it is slow at times but otherwise, it's a book you should read at some point if you are fascinated by WWII.

Have you read this book? What is your favorite YA historical fiction book? What is your favorite WWII book?