Code Name Verity

This is a tremendous book.
It tells the story of two young women in World War 2, one a pilot and one who becomes an SOE agent. It's no real spoiler to say that the latter, the eponymous 'Verity', winds up in the hands of the Gestapo, as this is revealed on the first page anyway. This stands as a warning to all potential readers that there are some harrowing passages, and Wein's writing doesn't shrink from the awfulness but also doesn't overload us with it or overindulge in gory detail. However, there is also a great deal of joy in this book, which shines all the brighter against the dark background.
This is a war story, but it's certainly not just for the genre afficionados. Above all it's a story of friendship and love—not sexual or romantic love but the deep love of two people from very different backgrounds who would probably never have met in peacetime but are thrown together by the upheavals of war.
There are some startling plot twists which only reveal themselves in the second half. I'm not always a fan of plot twists, as they can appear to be thrown in just to 'keep readers on their toes' but there is nothing gratuitous about these.
If I have one quibble, it's that it's labelled as 'Young Adult'. Not that it's unsuitable for young adults, it is, but I worry that this tag may put off older readers who would also love this book.
I took it in as an audiobook and it's beautifully done by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell.

If you have the faintest interest in WWII historical fiction, flying airplanes, or interesting, strong characters, then I can't recommend this book highly enough. I picked it up on Audible and started listening on Sunday afternoon; could barely stop long enough to sleep and picked it up immediately again in the morning and listenend till I was finished. The narrator Audible chose was brilliant and switches between Scottish and English accents flawlessly, taking you immediately into the story.

It's hard to talk much about the story without spoilers, but there are many plot twists, lots of suspense, moments that genuinely wrench the heartstrings, acts of great bravery, and you never quite know how anything will end for certain until the very last page. This is the first book I've enjoyed for years that left me feeling as bereft as if I'd lost a good friend when there was no more to it and I had to return to reality. Granted, I grew up reading Biggles books and I love the Connie Willis SF set in the WWII era, but I'd heartily recommend this to anybody.

I think I did myself a disservice with this book. It was apparent from the start that:
a) the narrator was lying in her narration. She's making a confession to her captor, who is a nazi; obviously she's lying, and
b) people were going to die. It's WWII; people did that a lot.

So I went into the book braced for it. "YOU'RE LYING TO ME AND TRYING TO MAKE ME HAVE FEELINGS BUT I WON'T STAND FOR IT."

So I didn't. Which rather misses the point of reading fiction, if one refuses to let it effect you.

This is the sort of book you ought to trust to take you there. It's not going to pull any dirty tricks, I promise.
That said, I really think the S.S. officer ought to have been rather more suspicious, given how much of first person narration had as its subtext "I am an excellent liar."