Review: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Oct. 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 and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Review

Every once in a couple of years, I happen to read a book that leaves me filled with awe... reminding of what words can do. Code Name Verity took my breath away with a story that broke my heart. The cover haunts me, now that I am aware of the meaning behind it. I can't forget Verity and Maddie and their friendship that was plain beautiful.

You couldn't make these people up, Elizabeth Wein says in the Author's Debriefing and I couldn't agree more. This book was filled with characters that felt so real... I could see them, hear them and feel the intensity of everything around and about them.

“It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.”

“KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!”

"Verity" is a British spy. She looked at the wrong side of the road and now she's at the mercy of the Gestapo, forced to give a full written confession to avoid the worst of consequences. In her confession, Verity writes about her friendship with Maddie, a pilot and the events that led to her capture. Everything about this raw and compelling account had me glued to my e-reader; I could not take my eyes away from the screen, even when I had to muffle a chuckle or blink away tears that threatened to fall.

I do not want to say more about the plot or the characters because it might just give everything away. All I want to say is this: Code Named Verity seemed full of technicalities about flying, codes and World War II that I wasn't sure I would be able to stomach. All those details about something that was alien to me... I couldn't make head or tail of it in the beginning. But I was sucked in soon as the beauty of the relationships and sentiments it was filled with broke through the practiced confession.

I loved the way the story was narrated. Every character, including Verity's captor Hauptsturmfürer von Linden, was multi-layered and intrigued me from the beginning. There are shades of gray in each one of them, including the protagonist. I appreciated the research that was done to give us a vivid picture of the setting behind Code Name Verity. It was especially amazing how the history of the ball point pen was incorporated into the story!

Code Name Verity is definitely one of my favourites of 2012! I want to give a copy of this book to each and every person I meet and say, Read this! For this book was vivid and poignant and crushed my heart into pieces; something that hasn't happened to me in the longest time.

Publication date: 15th May, 2012
Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children
Links: Amazon | The Book Depository | Goodreads
Source: NetGalley

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars