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.

This will prob­a­bly be one of the vaguer reviews I have writ­ten for Turn the Page. It would be unfor­giv­able to spoil any­thing, and frankly, I doubt I can really do the novel jus­tice. I saved this post to go up on the 8th of March, in honor of Inter­na­tional Women’s Day, because it seemed fit­ting to fea­ture a book that not only cel­e­brates female sol­i­dar­ity, love and friend­ship but also stars two inde­pen­dent hero­ines in uncon­ven­tional, dan­ger­ous roles for their time.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that you just know, before you’ve even turned to the first page, is going to be some­thing very special.

Code Name Ver­ity is that book.

I knew from one glance of the syn­op­sis that I would love this. Set dur­ing WWII? Told in diary-like form? Two strong female leads, one a pilot, the other an under­cover spy in the hands of the Gestapo? I was imme­di­ately sold and antic­i­pated it’s release for months.

There are many rea­sons why I love this book so much. I can often be nudged into lov­ing a story with a mediocre plot or aver­age writ­ing, if I care enough about the char­ac­ters. Code Name Ver­ity, with its viva­cious hero­ines (and they truly do deserve the title) and it’s intri­cately crafted plot, brought to life in the hands of a skilled writer, was quite sim­ply, a pure joy to read.

Ver­ity, whose con­fes­sion we are read­ing, is a col­lab­o­ra­tor. A cap­tured under­cover agent who makes a deal with the SS to divulge national secrets to the enemy in exchange for the barest of com­forts. In war-time that makes her pretty much the low­est of the low. Her unusual report is dis­rupted by ran­dom out­bursts of hatred towards her cap­tures, hints of sar­casm, fool­ish taunts guar­an­teed to lead to pun­ish­ment and peri­odic ram­blings, such as admir­ing the embossed sta­tionery she has been given to write on (or com­plain­ing about the recipe cards she is later forced to use). She reads like a young woman whose com­po­sure is slowly crum­bling, defi­ant in a child-like way, spoilt, weak, almost petulant.

And so very, very human. I couldn’t bring myself to despise Ver­ity, no mat­ter how many codes she handed over in exchange for her cloth­ing. We begin Code Name Ver­ity know­ing the worst. Ver­ity is a spy in the hands of the Gestapo. It’s 1943. There’s no res­cue com­ing for her. She knows, and we know, there is only one pos­si­ble out­come. It’s sim­ply a mat­ter of time and Ver­ity has bar­gained her­self some. How many of us could hon­estly say we wouldn’t do the same in her position?

It’s through Verity’s report that we are intro­duced to Mad­die, as she recounts their first meet­ing and con­se­quent friend­ship, lead­ing up to her arrival in France. It’s because of Mad­die that Ver­ity, with her fear of fly­ing, knows more than even she realised about planes and var­i­ous British air­field loca­tions that she is able to pass on to the SS. Mad­die, a radio oper­a­tor in the WAAF (Women’s Aux­il­iary Air Force) with a pas­sion for fly­ing, is the qui­eter, stead­ier, of the two. They are such unique, vivid char­ac­ters, the unlike­li­est of friends, and quite pos­si­bly one the best female friend­ships I’ve read.

There really aren’t enough young adult nov­els out there that fea­ture, strong, pas­sion­ate, brave, intel­li­gent women with skills, inter­ests and aspi­ra­tions of their own. It’s frus­trat­ing that a lot of hero­ines, par­tic­u­larly, it seems, within YA, are defined by or remem­bered for, their love inter­est. Very few female pro­tag­o­nist stand in mem­ory on their own. Fewer books still, show a sup­port­ive female friend­ship. More often than not, female char­ac­ters are viewed as a rival and there’s the ever pop­u­lar, stereo­typ­i­cal ‘mean girl’. My own girl­friends have formed some of the most impor­tant rela­tion­ships in my life and I loved that Code Name Ver­ity really cap­tures that.

Its like being in love, dis­cov­er­ing your best friend.

Wein brings to life vivid, mul­ti­fac­eted char­ac­ters with loy­al­ties, sto­ries and moti­va­tions beyond the page. Char­ac­ters I couldn’t help but love, Ver­ity, Mad­die, Jamie. Lady Beaufort-Stuart, whose win­dow is always left open in the hopes that so many lost chil­dren caught up in a dev­as­tat­ing war will find their way home. Vil­lains such as Von Lin­don, the ter­ri­fy­ing, unmov­able Nazi inter­roga­tor, who enjoys read­ing and dis­cussing banned lit­er­a­ture and keeps his own daugh­ter safely shielded from the war and his dirty job. The Nazi offi­cer whose own fam­ily is a part of the French resistance.

Code Name Ver­ity is an epis­to­lary novel with an inter­est­ing mix of nar­ra­tives that do take a lit­tle get­ting used to. Ver­ity writes in the 1st per­son, switch­ing to 3rd when­ever she recounts her past, con­ceal­ing her iden­tity. I know a few read­ers have been slightly put off by this and by the detailed accounts of wartime air­craft scat­tered through­out the first half of the novel (some­thing I very much enjoyed read­ing about). Like every­thing in this clev­erly con­structed novel, there is a rea­son for it. And I can only urge you to not let this stop any­one from pick­ing up this book.

Mov­ing, poignant, heart­break­ing. Code Name Ver­ity is a rare treat, a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse into women’s lesser known roles dur­ing the war, loy­alty, love and what it means to be brave.

Check back later today for an in-depth inter­view and guest post with Eliz­a­beth Wein!

poste

Check out some other reviews:

The Book Smugglers

Wear the Old Coat

Chachic’s Book Nook