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stormydawnc 's review for:
Code Name Verity
by Elizabeth Wein
With its interesting premise, strong center female friendship, and an unreliable narrator, I thought I was sure to love Code Name Verity. I haven’t read many WWII books recently, but as a teenager I gobbled up every single WWI and WWII book my school library had, so I thought Code Name Verity might be a return to my reading roots, especially considering the high praise this book has gotten from so many reviewers I trust. Yet I found myself being let down on all accounts by Code Name Verity’s pacing and plot—two highly important elements that I found completely lacking.
I will start with the few positive elements I found in Code Name Verity, and that was the two main characters, “Verity” and Maddie themselves. While I didn’t quite understand their friendship (more on that later), as separate characters I was completely enamored with them. The first half is Verity’s confession, as she is writing down the story of how she came to be captured by the Nazis and tortured. She’s given up eleven sets of codes, and now she tells her captors she’ll tell the truth to win back her clothes.
Verity’s confessions are tough to read at times. While none of the descriptions of the torture Verity undergoes are very detailed (she’s writing them down after the fact, so there’s some distance), they did tend to get graphic at times, fair warning. Even if I was having trouble with the story Verity was telling, I did love Verity’s voice. This young woman has lost everything, she’s so sure that she’ll be executed, and she finds small ways to fight back. I’m also a huge fan of an unreliable narrator. Even though Verity is insisting that she’s telling the truth, since the reader only gets her story, it’s impossible to know if she really is until the end.
But as much as I liked Verity, I loved Maddie. She’s a pilot, through and through. She knows that is what she’s good at, and she’s not trying to be anything else (unless forced to for her life). While Verity is a natural actress, all Maddie can do is remind herself to “fly the plane”. The second half of the book is told through Maddie’s journal, and I found Maddie’s part easier to read and more compelling, not only because I wanted to know what happened but because I thought it was better written as well.
Despite the fact I liked Verity and Maddie separately, Code Name Verity REALLY hinged around Verity and Maddie’s friendship. If you can’t buy into that relationship, the plot is not going to work for you, and it did NOT for me. I love good friendship stories, but I just didn’t feel this one. Sure, you can tell me they would do anything for each other (and they do often risk their lives for each other), but I’m confused as to how their friendship deepened so quickly. They really only have a few scenes together in the first half of the book when Verity is telling her story, and I never felt it. There were technically emotional scenes, but I never felt it, ever. In that regards, it reminded me quite a bit of how I felt about Not a Drop to Drink—like the words on the page were making an emotional scene, but the author somehow didn’t translate that emotion in a believable way.
I found the big “oh!” moment towards the end so heavily foreshadowed and personally unemotional that it just didn’t really do it for me. The pacing of Code Name Verity is so very, very slow. I was told that it picks up halfway through but I never felt like it did. The beginning of the book gets so bogged down in back story that by the time the main story started, I was rather unimpressed.
This review originally appeared on Book.Blog.Bake.
I will start with the few positive elements I found in Code Name Verity, and that was the two main characters, “Verity” and Maddie themselves. While I didn’t quite understand their friendship (more on that later), as separate characters I was completely enamored with them. The first half is Verity’s confession, as she is writing down the story of how she came to be captured by the Nazis and tortured. She’s given up eleven sets of codes, and now she tells her captors she’ll tell the truth to win back her clothes.
Verity’s confessions are tough to read at times. While none of the descriptions of the torture Verity undergoes are very detailed (she’s writing them down after the fact, so there’s some distance), they did tend to get graphic at times, fair warning. Even if I was having trouble with the story Verity was telling, I did love Verity’s voice. This young woman has lost everything, she’s so sure that she’ll be executed, and she finds small ways to fight back. I’m also a huge fan of an unreliable narrator. Even though Verity is insisting that she’s telling the truth, since the reader only gets her story, it’s impossible to know if she really is until the end.
But as much as I liked Verity, I loved Maddie. She’s a pilot, through and through. She knows that is what she’s good at, and she’s not trying to be anything else (unless forced to for her life). While Verity is a natural actress, all Maddie can do is remind herself to “fly the plane”. The second half of the book is told through Maddie’s journal, and I found Maddie’s part easier to read and more compelling, not only because I wanted to know what happened but because I thought it was better written as well.
Despite the fact I liked Verity and Maddie separately, Code Name Verity REALLY hinged around Verity and Maddie’s friendship. If you can’t buy into that relationship, the plot is not going to work for you, and it did NOT for me. I love good friendship stories, but I just didn’t feel this one. Sure, you can tell me they would do anything for each other (and they do often risk their lives for each other), but I’m confused as to how their friendship deepened so quickly. They really only have a few scenes together in the first half of the book when Verity is telling her story, and I never felt it. There were technically emotional scenes, but I never felt it, ever. In that regards, it reminded me quite a bit of how I felt about Not a Drop to Drink—like the words on the page were making an emotional scene, but the author somehow didn’t translate that emotion in a believable way.
I found the big “oh!” moment towards the end so heavily foreshadowed and personally unemotional that it just didn’t really do it for me. The pacing of Code Name Verity is so very, very slow. I was told that it picks up halfway through but I never felt like it did. The beginning of the book gets so bogged down in back story that by the time the main story started, I was rather unimpressed.
This review originally appeared on Book.Blog.Bake.