Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein

[goodreads]

Title: Code Name Verity
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Genre: WW2
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 452
Date read: July, 2012

Oct. 11th, 1943 - A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.

When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

I knew nothing about this book when I started it, so I had no idea what to expect, and even so it managed to surprise me. It started out as a fairly average WW2 spy novel (somewhat similar to Connie Willis' books in writing style, actually), but quickly changed into something very much out of the ordinary.

It is very, VERY slow to start, and I actually considered giving up on it once or twice, but I'm glad I stuck with it, because it definitely becomes worth it, and I think I read the last 50% in one or two sittings.

Not at all the book I had thought it would be, but very interesting and very thoughtprovoking.

I wish I owned the book as a book-book though, and not just as an e-book, because certain events in the second half of the book made me want to flip through the first half again, to pick up clues. And that's just not as easily done in an ebook!