Really good
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. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?
Review:
I first read the DA review which made me interested in this book maybe year and a half ago, but I have had some serious reservations because Natzi subject is a painful and personal one for me due to a lot of my grandmother's siblings being killed in that war and what my grandmother, and her surviving relatives lived through. At some point I think almost every family in the Soviet Union lost somebody in the Great Patriotic war. I grew up watching tons of movies about that time of period, reading a lot of books, many of them written by people who lived, who fought, who tried to survive. So not only I was worried that the subject will be too painful, but I also worried about the writer doing it justice.
So what this book was all about ? The blurb is very vague on purpose, but the part about Verity being caught by the Ghestapo is certainly true. She and other prisoners are also being tortured (Ghestapo, I think that is self-explanatory). There are no graphic descriptions , but there are certainly mentions and some brief descriptions, enough to made me chocked up and more than once, but overall not graphic. This book is actually a great example of how one can hit you with a description of pain without doing you know, a LONG description of it.
So Verity made a deal and writing her confession about her mission in exchange for couple more weeks and a little less horrifying day to day living conditions I guess? Verity is not deluding herself:
"I am just damned. I am utterly and completely damned. You'll shoot me at the end no matter what I do, because that's what you do to enemy agents. It's what we do to enemy agents".
Now here is the biggest pill I had to swallow in order to love this book - sorry, Ghestapo officer will not let you indulge yourself in writing your confession as a novel, sorry, no. This was ridiculous, but after giving myself a pep talk, I decided to proceed with this guy being a lover of literature and indulging himself or something like that.
So Verity writes and writes - about war and before war, and how she met her best friend, pilot Maddie and lots and lots of other stuff. Story of her and Maddie becoming friends is beautiful. I loved reading about Maddie's passion for airplanes.
"It's like being in love, discovering your best friend"
Second part is narrated by Maddie. And that's really all I can tell you without spoiling the book for you.
I hope I do not need to say not to expect happy ending for everybody, right?
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