Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein

Title: Rose Under Fire
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Genre: World War II
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 368, Audiobook ~12hrs
Date read: June 2013, April 2021

While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped in horrific circumstances, Rose finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery and friendship of her fellow prisoners. But will that be enough to endure the fate that’s in store for her?


... And here I thought "Code Name Verity" packed a punch...

Rose Under Fire is an extremely poignant and important book. I literally sat stunned for a couple of minutes after finishing it (be sure to read the author's afterword!). The horror of RUF is that this is all REAL! Oh sure, there never was a person like Rose Justice - the American who got mistaken for a French political prisoner and thus sent to Ravensbrück... but Ravensbrück itself is real... the war crimes committed against the "rabbits" were real. And that's what makes this book such a devastating read. Rose made the horrors of the concentration camps become real in a way few other books have managed to, because she is such a relate-able heroine, and the shock of going from discounting the rumours of medical experiments in concentration camps as "anti-German propaganda" to seeing for herself the results of those experiments is only all too believable.

The novel is interspersed with Rose's poetry - some of which is too heartbreaking for words.

Deadline - Mira Grant

Title: Deadline (Newsflesh #2)
Author: Mira Grant
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~15hrs
Date read: June 2013, June 2016, October 2020, June 2024

DO NOT READ THE SUMMARY OF "DEADLINE" ON GOODREADS UNLESS YOU'VE READ "FEED"!!! HUGE SPOILERS!!!

... trying to make this a spoiler-free review though, so I'll leave out the summary for this one...

Very obviously the middle book of a trilogy and therefore really cannot stand on its own. It had me totally hooked from the very beginning, and was as action-packed as I could have wished, but the story was definitely action-driven and character-driven rather than plot-driven... some major twists were thrown at us, but nothing resolved.

I'm still really impressed by the world-building, and how Mira Grant so effortlessly switches between Shaun and George's voices - making both equally believable. I thought the revelations about their relationship more than a little unnecessary though... it makes sense, but I'm not sure that it was necessary for the story... but perhaps that will be revealed in the next book.

In the Bag - Kate Klise

Title: In the Bag
Author: Kate Klise
Genre: YA
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 306
Date read: June, 2013

A European vacation. A luggage mix-up. A note from a secret admirer.

Meet two single parents who think they're too busy to date.
And two teenagers who can't stop writing flirty emails.
This is a tale of connections - missed and made - in a universe that seems to have its heart set on reuniting Ms. 6B and Mr. 13C.

I picked this up on a whim after seeing it on a "Top Ten Travelling Books" list somewhere. It sounded cute, so I figured "why not" - and as so often happens when I have no particular expectations, I ended up being utterly charmed by it :)

The story itself is nothing special - pretty run-of-the-mill YA - but the characters are so real that I couldn't help being taken in by them. I like the way the story chances POV in each chapter, giving us insight into all four main characters that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

If you enjoyed Anna and the French Kiss and 13 Little Blue Envelopes, this book should be right up your aisle. A quick read too - I read it in one lazy Saturday :)