Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Jul. 12th, 2012 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iariaSet during WWII two very different young women become unlikely best friends. One is a pilot and one is spy. When a mission to France goes wrong the spy is captured by the Gestapo and the story begins with her written 'confession' to her captors.
I loved it. It was brilliant. It was beautifully written and emotionally moving. The characters were wonderful and the friendship between the two girls was amazing. I loved them. The structure of the book was unusual but it ended up working really well. It was also completely heartbreaking. I spent the last fifty pages teary-eyed and the last 15 crying. Oh my heart. Oh, Julie. Oh, Maddie.
I would definitely highly recommend this book with a note that I think it would be best read with no previous knowledge about it. Don't even read the blurb on the book.
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+ Here's the thing - part way through Maddie's POV section I just suddenly had a moment of fear that both girls would end up killed by guillotine. I looked at the cover and the two tied hands holding each other and remembered the French girl's death and felt certain that this was what would happen. So the latter third of the book became very harrowing. I was on the edge of my seat. The prisoner transfer actually made me feel better at first because I stopped worrying about them being guillotined and for a couple pages thought they would make it.
Even after Maddie shot Julie I still thought that Julie would turn up alive. My only excuse is that for some reason I thought Julie had fallen off the bridge and into the water. I think because of Maddie's repeated "she was gone" afterward. I didn't actually realise that Julie had fallen on the bridge and her body left there until Maddie met with Julie's great-aunt at the Damask house and it's mentioned that she was buried in the backyard. Cue sobbing. Up until then I was still expecting, desperately hoping, for Julie to make a triumphant, if injured, re-appearance.
I just so wanted them both to get away, to survive and be best friends for the rest of their lives and to continue to make an amazing team on further adventures and oh, girls..
+ I loved Weir's use of unreliable narrator in this book and how you don't realise until the last third just how unreliable it was. It gave a lot of great suspense to the story.
The structure of (most of) the book is very unusual - Julie writing a story for her captors about the past from Maddie's POV with asides about what is happening to Julie right then - but it works so well. At first I wasn't certain about it if only because I wasn't sure that it would give us enough of Julie and who she was but by the end I think it managed that really well.
+ I love love Julie. I love how brilliant and brave she was. You see pieces of it as she's writing - the casual mentions of how she's being tortured, the hints of something more happening, the way she keeps fighting and trying to escape - and all told in a casual manner but showing the opposite of the scared cowardly girl in over her head that she's been portraying. Certainly she's scared but she was in no way a coward.
It's not until Maddie and Engel's meeting, and Maddie getting Julie's notes, that you get a full picture of just how amazing and competent and clever Julia Beaufort-Stuart was. She turned a German soldier while being held prisoner! She lied and lied so well that she fooled the Gestapo and played them. She filled her written confession with clues about her plan. Even as a prisoner she worked to complete her mission. She was so brilliant.
+ Also I loved that Julie wasn't just a spy but an interrogator as well. And someone who was very competent at her job.
+ I adored the Julie/Maddie friendship. I loved this line: “It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.”
+ I was glad that before she died Julie knew that Maddie was alive and well. The idea of her dying thinking Maddie had died (on a mission Julie pushed for Maddie's inclusion in) would have made it so much worse somehow.
+ I loved how the focus of this book truly was on the women. It wasn't simply two heroines surrounded by mostly male characters as it often seems to happen but rather two heroines surrounded by amazing women in both supporting and bit parts. Beryl, Dympna, Engel, Penn, Matraillette and Amelie, Marie and so many others. There are a lot of male characters as well with important roles but I loved how much of a focus there was on the women.
+ I really liked the little side characters but also how we don't learn the fates of any of them. With only a few words Wein manages to make characters have so much depth.
+ Okay, now I need all the fix it fics in the world. I need Julie and Maddie escaping and having tons of adventures together after the war.
I loved it. It was brilliant. It was beautifully written and emotionally moving. The characters were wonderful and the friendship between the two girls was amazing. I loved them. The structure of the book was unusual but it ended up working really well. It was also completely heartbreaking. I spent the last fifty pages teary-eyed and the last 15 crying. Oh my heart. Oh, Julie. Oh, Maddie.
I would definitely highly recommend this book with a note that I think it would be best read with no previous knowledge about it. Don't even read the blurb on the book.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
+ Here's the thing - part way through Maddie's POV section I just suddenly had a moment of fear that both girls would end up killed by guillotine. I looked at the cover and the two tied hands holding each other and remembered the French girl's death and felt certain that this was what would happen. So the latter third of the book became very harrowing. I was on the edge of my seat. The prisoner transfer actually made me feel better at first because I stopped worrying about them being guillotined and for a couple pages thought they would make it.
Even after Maddie shot Julie I still thought that Julie would turn up alive. My only excuse is that for some reason I thought Julie had fallen off the bridge and into the water. I think because of Maddie's repeated "she was gone" afterward. I didn't actually realise that Julie had fallen on the bridge and her body left there until Maddie met with Julie's great-aunt at the Damask house and it's mentioned that she was buried in the backyard. Cue sobbing. Up until then I was still expecting, desperately hoping, for Julie to make a triumphant, if injured, re-appearance.
I just so wanted them both to get away, to survive and be best friends for the rest of their lives and to continue to make an amazing team on further adventures and oh, girls..
+ I loved Weir's use of unreliable narrator in this book and how you don't realise until the last third just how unreliable it was. It gave a lot of great suspense to the story.
The structure of (most of) the book is very unusual - Julie writing a story for her captors about the past from Maddie's POV with asides about what is happening to Julie right then - but it works so well. At first I wasn't certain about it if only because I wasn't sure that it would give us enough of Julie and who she was but by the end I think it managed that really well.
+ I love love Julie. I love how brilliant and brave she was. You see pieces of it as she's writing - the casual mentions of how she's being tortured, the hints of something more happening, the way she keeps fighting and trying to escape - and all told in a casual manner but showing the opposite of the scared cowardly girl in over her head that she's been portraying. Certainly she's scared but she was in no way a coward.
It's not until Maddie and Engel's meeting, and Maddie getting Julie's notes, that you get a full picture of just how amazing and competent and clever Julia Beaufort-Stuart was. She turned a German soldier while being held prisoner! She lied and lied so well that she fooled the Gestapo and played them. She filled her written confession with clues about her plan. Even as a prisoner she worked to complete her mission. She was so brilliant.
+ Also I loved that Julie wasn't just a spy but an interrogator as well. And someone who was very competent at her job.
+ I adored the Julie/Maddie friendship. I loved this line: “It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.”
+ I was glad that before she died Julie knew that Maddie was alive and well. The idea of her dying thinking Maddie had died (on a mission Julie pushed for Maddie's inclusion in) would have made it so much worse somehow.
+ I loved how the focus of this book truly was on the women. It wasn't simply two heroines surrounded by mostly male characters as it often seems to happen but rather two heroines surrounded by amazing women in both supporting and bit parts. Beryl, Dympna, Engel, Penn, Matraillette and Amelie, Marie and so many others. There are a lot of male characters as well with important roles but I loved how much of a focus there was on the women.
+ I really liked the little side characters but also how we don't learn the fates of any of them. With only a few words Wein manages to make characters have so much depth.
+ Okay, now I need all the fix it fics in the world. I need Julie and Maddie escaping and having tons of adventures together after the war.
