Name: Christine's review of Code Name Verity by Elizabeth E. Wein
Item: Code Name Verity
Rating: 5
Author: Christine

Elizabeth E. Wein

The beloved #1 New York Times bestseller, a "fiendishly plotted" (New York Times) "heart-in-your mouth adventure" (Washington Post) that "will take wing and soar into your heart" (Laurie Halse Anderson) October 11th, 1943--A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun. When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution. As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy? A universally acclaimed Michael L. Printz Award Honor book, Code Name Verity is a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other.

Code Name Verity

My mind immediately goes to this line whenever I read romance now.

Did I call them Laurel and Hardy? I meant sodding Romeo and Juliet. This is flirting, à la Gestapo underlings.

Caroline Clutterbuck Kapulkin

Elizabeth Wein

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage and great courage as she relates what she must do to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

mica

Arianna Marx

Two young women become unlikely best friends during WWII, until one is captured by the Gestapo. Only in wartime could a stalwart lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a special operations executive.

Christine

WHY DO I LIKE THIS BOOK SO MUCH???????

edit: jamie. that's why i like this book so much.

Colleen

** spoiler alert **
           Rating: 3.5 

This review contains minor spoilers although I tried to limit them.

I came across this book on Goodreads and requested it from the library. It wasn't until I picked it up that I realized it was a YA book. From the description, I really thought it was adult. A WWII spy being held and tortured by the Gestapo doesn't sound like a teen topic to me. So I was a little miffed and wary as I started reading. 

The beginning was a little rough. The reader doesn't know what has already happened, and you have to figure it out along the way. The story is told in the form of a confession written by the captured agent. So the first portion of the book jumps around a lot and is mainly flashbacks to how the operative was captured and all of the events leading up to that. It skips around over several years with pockets of the present strewn throughout. It is also confusing in the beginning because the operative often writes about herself in the third person. Her reasoning is that she feels so different from the person she started out as and also to confuse the enemies reading the confession. But since you have no idea who she is at the beginning - not even her name - it makes it hard to figure out what is happening.

The setting also did not feel 100% accurate. Even though it was chock full of historical details (sometimes to the point of distraction), something still felt a little discordant with the time. I am not certain whether it was their diction or the writing style, but it just didn't FEEL like 1943. There were also a lot of early 1900's literature references. I know the main character was supposed to be a literature major, but often it felt like the references were there to cement the setting. I'll admit I looked a couple of them up to make sure they were published prior to WWII.

The second half definitely improved. I was wrapped up in what was happening. There are a couple of decent twists. The ending was much stronger and more poignant than I was expecting. It definitely left me pondering what had happened. If the beginning had been as powerful as the ending, then this would definitely receive a higher rating. As it was, I almost rounded up to four stars. But the muddled beginning held me back. It was still an engaging read however. I really loved the ending.

That's really all I can say without major spoilers.

The bookThe New York Timescalled "a fiendishly plotted mind game of a novel" is now available in paperback! Two young women from totally different backgrounds are thrown together during the Second World War. One is a working-class girl from Manchester, the other a Scottish aristocrat; one is a pilot, the other a wireless operator. Yet whenever their paths cross, they complement each other perfectly, and before long they are devoted friends. But then a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France. She is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. The story begins in "Verity's" own words, as she writes her account for her captors.

Carol Bailey

I’m a little late coming to the Code Name Verity party but here I am jumping on the band wagon. This is definitely on the top 3 books that I have read in 2012. The story is based during WWI and revolves around two women, their friendship and the roles they play during the war. One ultimately becomes a British spy and the other is an airplane pilot. 

The story is written in two parts, the 1st half of the book is narrated by the captured spy’s point of view and the second half is narrated by the pilot. I’m not usually a big fan historical stories but the story has a great flow and as a reader I was quickly drawn in. The difficulty in reviewing the story is that I don’t want to spoil the plot, so generically there are a few interesting plot twists and a few places where you definitely need a tissue handy. This was well worth the read.

Tess

I am going to be haunted by this book for a long time. Despite that, i highly recommend the masterful audible version of this 5 star book.

Insgesamt gutes Buch, der erste Teil ist teils langweilig aber der zweite Teil ist sehr spannend. Krasses Ende

Ann-Kathrin 

Insgesamt gutes Buch, der erste Teil ist teils langweilig aber der zweite Teil ist sehr spannend. Krasses Ende



Mackenzie Young

I’ll get to this eventually. I may just need a few months to recover from reading this book. Hello, reading slump.

jess

[review written 2013]

so yeah i just finished code name verity and i liked it a lot. i’ve heard a lot of good things about this book, but i didn’t find it as good as everyone else said it would. for me, the book picked up about two thirds of the way through. (it’s hard to not spoil anything because there is a lot to spoil and a giant painful plot twist that comes near the end that i still cannot believe.)

both maddie and queenie sounded the same, i think, there wasn’t much of a different voice to them. i also felt that their friendship went from acquaintance to soulmates with no in-between. that was jarring for me. 

it also felt very technical to me. that might be because i don’t know much about world war 2 air pilots, but i loved that women handle everything in it, i love that it’s a story that features mainly two young women. i loved that. 
the diary narration felt like a diary some of the time but other times there was dialog, and trust me, i’ve tried to write diaries like a story–real ones–and it doesn’t work, you don’t remember what it said and real life speech can’t translate to page too well. but it felt more diary-like than many other stories i’ve read with character’s writing in diary form, with underlined and crossed out words, with no punctuation sometimes

so that was a good. it was a book that was hard to get into, but once you did, it was a lot more interesting. or maybe i’m just tired.

"𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒 𝐌𝐄, 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐘. 𝐊𝐢𝐬𝐬 𝐦𝐞, 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐂𝐊!"
- ᴘᴀɢᴇ 378

-- my review --

This gets a solid 5/5 wireless sets. This is one of the books I think about every single day; probably because it's my Lit text, but that doesn't make it any less brilliant.

TW: this is a historical war novel so you can expect descriptions of violence, death, blood, torture scenes etc.

What I loved: having to analyse this text for my grades actually made me realise how well written this story is. EVERYTHING has meaning and EVERY character has their own significance.

What I couldn't appreciate: too realistic *sobs*. I'm kidding. Everything was so well-balanced.

This isn't the easiest to read, but get through it once and you'll find something new every next time you flip through it. There’s loads of literary devices– metaphors, imagery, symbolism, allusions. Everything plays into the bigger themes of war, mortality, friendship, duty, which makes it devastatingly beautiful. Truly unforgettable.


It takes about 40-50 pages to really understand what's going on in this epistolary novel, but once the pieces began to fit together, I had to know how it ended.
As you read, it has you flipping back to make sure you remembered something correctly - and figuring out the mysteries while reading is one of my favorite parts of a suspense story.

Very sad, and not for the faint of heart, but not as gorily descriptive as I had anticipated. Still, a lot of tough material; it is set in WWII, of course. I thought the ending was very well done.

At the heart of it, this is a story about an incredible friendship. I love how the female characters are written. This one will stick with me for a while.

Amanda Kordeliski

I was hesitant to read this book because of all the gushing praise it has received. Generally when a historical fiction novel garners this much attention it translates to a book I will intensely dislike. Because of this I had the ARC on my kindle go untouched until after the release date. I checked out the audio of Code Name Verity to listen to while I moved books in my library. It was superb. The audio is read by two seperate women, one the voice of Queenie and the other Maddie. The story is the confession of a Scottish woman wireless radio operator held prisoner in Nazi occupied France in 1943. I listened to the audio at work, read the book at home. 

The characters of both Maddie and Queenie are heroic, sympathetic, lovable and heartbreaking. Each character has a distinctive and separate voice and Occupied France comes to life in the pages of this book. The ending was realistic but heartbreaking. Highly recommended.

Libby G

I first encountered Code Name Verity as an audio book I started on a whim. I was instantly drawn in by the voice of Julie, and the complexity of tale. Unfortunately I got busy with school and had to turn in the audio book before I finished and just got around to finishing now. 
Julie's voice and unique narrative drew me in just as it had the first time. This story does not gloss over the harshness of which Julie was treated. I loved reading Maddie and Julie's story. Women fighting male oppression to help with the war. 
There were a few slow parts in the book that took me awhile to get through but all in all I was hooked the entire way through.

Kelsi Proulx

I enjoyed this one but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read the paper version. I felt confused in quite a few places but I think it's just because the narration was a little quick in areas I would have preferred to maybe read over a couple times.

However, I really enjoyed the characters, so firey! The historical accuracy was pretty phenomenal too. I would recommend this one for sure!

Jessica Ray

more like 3.5 stars!

part 1 was at times confusing, but part 2 made up for it! absolutely loved how Wein ended the book too!

Thomas George

This is definitely one of my favorite books. The book tells is in beautiful detail, the tale of two best friends and their lives as a female pilot and a spy. The book is refreshing and leaves the reader thinking. The tragic beauty of the book could not possibly have been better. 

Jacque

I got sucked into this book immediately. The relationship between the two leads is so beautiful and funny and heartbreaking it makes every page of this story worth it. 

This enhanced edition features exclusive material and bonus content. In addition to the novel, this ebook includes: - ‘Something Worth Doing’: the short story that inspired Code Name Verity, never before published in the UK - A filmed interview with Elizabeth - Exclusive footage of Elizabeth Wein at The Shuttleworth Collection, home to some of the oldest operational aircraft in the world - The Verity Collection: a fascinating documentary of Elizabeth’s personal collection of WW2 memorabilia Two young women become unlikely best friends during World War II, until one is captured by the Gestapo. Only in wartime could a stalwart lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat. But then a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France. She is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. The story begins in “Verity”’s own words, as she writes her account for her captors.Truth or lies? Honour or betrayal? Everything they've ever believed in is put to the test . . . A gripping thriller, Code Name Verity blends a work of fiction into 20th century history with spine-tingling results. A book for young adults like no other. “This is a remarkable book” Daily Mail

Kate

Not perfect but I love these girls and their story with all my heart

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

Code name Verity

Anna Agarwal

It started really confusing but got a lot better.

Paulina 

It was quite entertaining, but I don't understand all that hype.

Megan Cooper

Can't really discuss the book without spoiling it for the next reader. Don't read any reviews, the blurbs or discussions. Go into this one cold and you'll find a riveting book that I wanted to immediately read again to appreciate just how complex the narrative is. Some may not appreciate the narrative style - but it lends so much to the overall story. It may go up to five stars on the second read.

Jeni Enjaian

I wish I could have had even more time to read this book. I absolutely loved this book even though at first glance, I did not know what to make of it. The casual yet at the same time serious tone with which the narrator, Queenie/Julie, discusses her imprisonment and spy work intrigued me. I wanted to find out those details, the answers to the riddle Queenie kept weaving as she told her story going back and forth between the history of her friendship with Maddie and her current situation. Then when the narrator shifted right at that pivotal moment, I kept frantically reading to figure out what had actually happened to Queenie. Even though I want to say more to give a full review, I will stop there because if I say more, I will spoil this brilliant book.
I absolutely loved it.

estefania sanchez sanz

“Code name verity” was a good historical fiction. However, I was expecting something different from this book, I do not know what but definitely something different. The first part of the book was really difficult for me to get through, there were a lot of flashes to the past of the main character and the language was not easy either. Moreover, because I do not really fully understand the first part I could not fully understand the second part of the book. From what I did understand I liked the story but it was not captivating and not really interesting. In my opinion, it was another story about the World War II, and I know they are many people that love reading this stories that even when they are fiction they could have been truth. I am just not one of them, I like historical fiction but when they are about other thing different than the war, when they give some hope.

I recommend this book to those who love typical World War II stories, however if you do not you might have some problems like I did to get through with it.

Hope Brockway

Hannah

so beautiful, so tragic, so heartbreaking. oh my gosh, this book.

Arianna Marx &
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth E. Wein

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