Moving into the second half, the story becomes so utterly absorbing that it is nearly impossible to put it down. When her last sentence is cut off and it is revealed, through a cryptic note from a senior Nazi officer, that she is going to be sent to an experimentation centre, I was gripping the book so hard my knuckles were turning white. As she neared the end of the story of her ill-fated journey to France with Maddie, the reader knows that Julie's time is almost up, and can sense the tension building. Having said all that, once Julie's story began to draw to a close, I felt that the pace picked up a bit, and I started to really root for her. In fact, I was frustrated by how difficult it was to grasp why certain things were happening, such as the interview with an American journalist named Georgia Penn, or even why Maddie and Julie spent a whole day trying to cycle to a café in the rain. I couldn't understand why Julie was so determined to bargain for extra time so that she could finish her story when it would just prolong her suffering, and why the Germans were so keen for her to write it, because as far as I could tell it contained very little information on the British War Effort that would actually be of any use to them. It took me a very, very long time to get into the first half of the book, and there were times when I considered giving up on it completely – mainly because I struggled to follow what was going on, and was confused by all the coded abbreviations, plane jargon, jumping between different time periods, and rambling writing style. Needless to say, this makes for quite grim reading at times, and my initial feelings about the book were mixed, to say the least. While being held prisoner of war in northern France, and forced to regurgitate everything she knows about the British war effort in return for her life, Julie pours out her story, flitting between her horrific experiences in the prison and her memories of her developing friendship with Maddie. After a daring mission into German-occupied France goes disastrously wrong, the two best friends are separated, and it is at this point that the story begins.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein