Code Name Verity ~ Elizabeth Wein (eARC) review

Code Name Verity
Hyperion Books for Children
May 15, 2012
343 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from TBD/or Amazon

She's been captured in Nazi-occupied France and knows the outcome will be the same no matter what she does: in just a matter of weeks they will shoot her. It's what they do to enemy agents and she's a member of the British military.

If she cooperates, though, gives them all she can remember about the British War Effort, they'll continue to give her all the paper she wants or needs to write her story down on. The story that led to her plane, the one flown by Maddie, crashing, her being captured, Maddie somewhere and now this story being told . . . She may be a traitor but she's going to stay alive and finish writing her story - the one that starts wit Maddie, her friend and a brilliant pilot.


I hate when books that everyone else (or it seems like everyone else) loves, just don't work for me. Code Name Verity was getting such fantastic reviews - from publications as well as bloggers and authors - that I was thrilled when it was offered on NetGalley.*

I tend to really enjoy historical fiction including YA and MG historical fiction. That it was set during World War II and about the role girls - and women - had in the war effort aside from being nurses (the way everyone already knows they were involved).

Part One of Verity is told through the story the main character, the one captured and held prisoner by the Nazis, is writing for her captors. She does not have a name for a large portion of that telling so she won't here, either. She tells of Maddie, how she got into flying and how they met.

Her tale is told through little glimpses or anecdotes that give us the basic ideas of how a got to b to c but not a lot of interaction between different characters and not a lot of action. The way the story was told made it hard for me to get into Verity or connect with the characters. It was a very slow read for me.

Something about the way this story was told was just not for me. The premise was interesting - I loved the idea of the girl's friendship, seeing what they would be allowed to do given the time period and what would actually happened to the captured character - but it just didn't align for me.

Whatever was keeping me a bit disconnected from the story, kept me also from really seeing their great friendship. It was an interesting story to me but that was about it.

I did like Part II more, but I think that was because it was more continuous storyline as well as the fact that a lot had already been established in Part I.

Check Goodreads for reviews from lots of people who did connect with the book and loved it!


Rating: 6/10


Other book(s) you might also enjoy: Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer with Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck



Thank you to NetGalley and Hyperion for letting me read this book.


*Disney/Hyperion hasn't been offering e-galleys to bloggers as of late, this was a 'Read Now' title and available to all NG members