It’s the end of the semseter, and sadly the end of Books and Bops. I’ve so enjoyed writing these posts throughout the year and hope you enjoyed reading and listening! For my first post, I reviewed my favorite book – for my last, I’m reviewing my second-favorite!

As a little kid, I read everything I could get my hands on. It was usually fantasy novels, as that was the largest population in my public library, but I fell in love with historical fiction when I first read Fever. I later went down the World War II rabbit hole, where I discovered the absolute gut punch that is Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity.

“I am a coward. I wanted to be heroic and I pretended I was. God, I tried hard last week. My God, I tried. But now I know I am a coward. And I’m going to give you anything you ask, everything I can remember. Absolutely Every Last Detail.”

The Book

Code Name Verity throws us right into Nazi-occupied France, where the novel kicks off in the form of the confession of a captured spy. Queenie, as she calls herself, has bargained for her life by sharing secrets of the Allied war effort. She’s kept in horrific conditions and tortured continuously as she writes everything she can. Spun in with her codes and locations of the airfield is the story of her friendship with Maddie, the pilot who flew her into France. She ended up with Maddie’s identification papers before she got captured and their plane was found crashed in a cornfield, so her retelling is also her tribute to Maddie as she grieves her death.

Only Maddie’s not dead – she’s very much alive and stranded in France with forged identification papers and very little understanding of the language. She’s just a pilot, and is not trained to hide in plain sight. As Maddie documents her struggle to get back home, it becomes clear that the two stories aren’t lining up – and not everything is as it seems.

As I said, this book is a total sucker punch that keeps you guessing the entire time. The girls obviously have a deep friendship that helps to keep them afloat throughout their ordeal. The novel is obviously fictional, but uses true stories of women spy networks in World War II as a basis of the story.

Overall, Code Name Verity gets five out of five stars. It is an artfully crafted novel based in real situations, but the beginning of Queenie’s confession does drag if you’re not the type to enjoy tiny details. Once it picks up, and the reader gets invested, it is impossible to put it down.

The Bop

Code Name Verity‘s bop is “Seven” by Taylor Swift. The song looks back on a close friendship where one person had an unhappy home life. Although that’s not the case here, the song can be applied as the girls are both in different situations: one who’s doomed from the minute she lands and one who has been given a chance. The deep friendship and love is still there between the girls even as they go through their own struggles.

In conclusion, read Code Name Verity. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll start running around saying “Kiss me, Hardy!”

“I do mean fly safely. And I do mean come back.”