Every time I write about a YA book, I begin with the caveat that I don't often read YA. Generally speaking, I still think this is true, because in the grand scheme of all my reading material, YA probably makes up less than 5%. However, I feel the need to write disproportionately about YA books for the blog because its a genre that sees far more female success than literary fiction, and I suspect that Bookhive readers, like myself, don't read much YA fiction, and thus would appreciate thoughtful recommendations from the genre.

Thus, Code Name Verity, a YA novel that greatly benefits from its context in WWII, because it avoids one of my greatest YA pet peeves, which is an inundation of pop culture references that say more about the author than about the characters (Rainbow Rowell, I'm talking to you). The novel is told through a really tightly structured narrative of written confessions by 'Verity' a British spy captured by the Nazis in France. To describe it in more detail would be to give away far too much, because it is a serious page-turner with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. This is one of those examples of a YA book seeming like more of a marketing choice than anything else, because the characters are young, but more like young adults than teens; with the strong female-driven action adventure elements though, I can see why a publisher would see it as a natural inheritor of all that Hunger Games enthusiasm, and the fact that it's historically grounded rather than dystopian makes it a refreshing addition to a blockbuster genre of the moment. I read it fully expecting to dislike it, because the premise seemed so implausible and contrived, but I was really quickly disarmed by it.

There really is something enchanting about girls in this context, subverting all the gender expectations they were raised with, because of a national crisis. It operates in the same space as Rosie the Riveter or Agent Peggy Carter or the truly delightful Manhattan TV series, which I cannot recommend enough.