Thursday, October 23, 2014

REVIEW: CODE NAME VERITY by Elizabeth Wein




Title: Code Name Verity
Series: Code Name Verity, #1
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Publisher: Egmont Press
Publication Date: February 6, 2012
Genres: YA, Historical Fiction
Reviewed by: Angie Edwards
My rating: 2/5

SUMMARY

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




REVIEW

I am definitely in the minority here with my low star rating. I can’t say exactly what it is why I didn’t enjoy this book. All I know is that it didn’t captivate or engage me at all. Most of the time I was lost and confused and didn’t have an inkling of what was going on. Moreover, I was just plain and simply bored out of my mind. What seemed, from the book summary, to be an exciting and unique read, turned out to be something I couldn’t wait to finish.

For some reason, probably too often being confused, I couldn’t connect with the characters. I didn’t care about their stories, and much less the parts about flying and all the different aircraft. I couldn’t understand why Maggie was supposed to be the main focus. The only bits I did enjoy were the interrogation of the narrator, and her interactions with her captors.

In all fairness, I have to say that Code Name Verity isn’t a badly-written book. Quite the opposite. I just think it wasn’t my cup of tea. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this book, and might read it again someday to see if I feel differently about it. The author clearly did a whole lot of research for this book, and overall I think the YA genre can do with more such unique reads that don’t focus so much on romance and the paranormal. Even though this novel wasn’t exactly for me, I would still recommend it, and I would like to read more of Wein’s books.

  


  


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ABOUT the AUTHOR


Elizabeth Wein has lived in Scotland for over ten years and wrote nearly all her novels there.  Her first five books for young adults are set in Arthurian Britain and sixth century Ethiopia.  The most recent of these form the sequence The Mark of Solomon, published in two parts as The Lion Hunter (2007) and The Empty Kingdom (2008).  The Lion Hunter was short-listed for the Andre Norton Award for Best Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2008.  Elizabeth also writes short stories.



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