Code Name Verity

Code Name Verity is one of those books that I feel like everyone's been talking about for years. But for all that people were gushing about this book online, I managed to avoid hearing anything specific about it for a while. Then a few keywords entered my subconscious: female fighter pilots, female friendships, spies. I knew I had to read it.

It's difficult to talk about this book. It deals with spies during WWII, so right off the bat you've got an unreliable narrator. As the details of her situation become more clear, it also becomes clear that something big is coming. But it's impossible to discern what that something is.

Suffice it to say that this book was amazing. It deals first and foremost with female friendship, but it also focuses on women's war effort during WWII. There are female pilots and radio operators, interrogators and spies. It's refreshing to get a book that focuses on this side of the war effort, bringing to light things that have been obscured by history. And Wein includes a detailed bibliography at the end, along with notes on what liberties she took to make her story work. It's my favorite kind of historical fiction: the kind that's just true enough to get you asking more.

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