Code Name Verity

Maybe it is the curse of the much beloved critical darling...I almost never like them. The blurbs on the cover did not help. The plot is not “riveting” or a “mind game”. Sigh. I should have LOVED this novel. I am a WWII scholar. I love books about strong female leads. I should have loved this way more than I did. Sadly, that is not the way this went down.
First it took me a month to read it. Every time I put it down, I didn't want to pick it back up. I've heard this is a common problem with the print version and that people who switch to the audio book have a completely different reaction. What does that say about the writing? I don't know.
Second, I cared more for Maddie than Verity because Verity is too many people for me to keep track of which leads me to:
Third, there are great periods in which is seems as if nothing is happening in the story, but stuff is, and it's not clear until later, and by then I couldn't remember/didn't care what it was that was that happened in the first place. For example, the big giant compelling emotional scene on the bridge barely hit me because I thought what happened had already HAPPENED (twice over, actually) and was just sure it was another fake-out.

I am left with the same feeling of meh I get from watching Downton Abbey. And just as many people around me love DA and watch it on pins and needles (why they do, I have NO idea when the biggest reveal is that the WRONG roses have been planted-gasp!) the same people like this book. So, now I know who to recommend it to.

I think what I really expected here, and only found a teeny tiny bit of, was charm. There is a bit in which Maddie visits Jamie and the evacuees in Scotland, and I felt it then. A sense of what everyone was fighting for....it was rather fleeting.

Overall, I liked it well enough to finish it (confession: I finished expecting a big, surprising pay off of some clever twist I never saw coming), but I will not read the companion novel. I don't know yet whether the story will stick with me. And it's not the book's fault that it didn't play out the way I expected it to, and I am confident that I can recommend it to the right readers. I am glad I experienced it.