Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: The Review

Code Name Verity

by

Elizabeth Wein

 

Title: Code Name Verity

Author: Elizabeth Wein

Publisher: Electric Monkey 

Buy This Book: Amazon

'Verity' has been captured by the Gestapo after looking the wrong way before crossing the street, a rookie mistake for an undercover British spy in Nazi occupied France to make. She has been tortured and given the choice to write down everything she knows about the British War Effort or she will be executed. So this is what 'Verity' does, she writes down everything she knows. How she met Maddie, the girl who flew her in to France and her best friend. How she came to be a spy and how she came to be in France.

I have put off reviewing this book for quite some time for one simple reason: I hated it! But not just because I hated it but because I hated it any everybody else seemed to love it. I had tried reading this book twice before but had given up and returned it back to work. But as I was looking for books for my teenage reading group at work I had seen it on so many recommended books lists along with many books I had read and loved. So I began to think maybe I had been too hasty and maybe it takes a while to get into and maybe it's worth a read in the end. So I picked it up again, with my expectations not too high but with a slight hope that it was as amazing as all the reviews I read were saying. IT WAS NOT!

Now when I say it got amazing reviews, I mean amazing! So when I finished it feeling like I had wasted precious hours of my life on some beyond awful book, I felt that maybe there was something wrong with me and not the book. But after some digging I managed to find quite a lot of people who felt the exact same as I did - just one example. 

I want to explain why I disliked this book so much, so here goes nothing:

My main issue with this book was probably how beyond boringly dull it was. 'Verity's' life is on the line and she is talking about picnics that Maddie went on and what she ate and what she felt because they obviously had so many in depth conversations about picnics. I wanted to fall asleep and put the book down pretty much constantly and yet, like an idiot, I stuck with it. Really wish I hadn't, as it was so not worth it.

It was also unbelievable. I think this may be from the part of me that studied History at college and for GCSE. You pretty much learn about Nazi Germany every year, it's an interesting and important part of history. And everything I know about Hitler and the Nazi's made me want to scream at this book. If I was falling asleep at her confessions I am sure they were too. She put in barely any useful information and filled them full of useless drivel. I am certain that if she were really being tortured she would not be so light hearted about it. I don't believe her captors would be happy with her confessions and they would probably have killed her barely a day in to it unless she had started coughing up something substantially better. So I literally could not get past that the entire time I was reading her boring stories.

Also her friendship with Maddie, this amazing friendship that makes them want to save one another, I didn't get it. I'm sure I felt a stronger bond and better understanding of Maddie's friendship with Beryl than I did hers and Verity's. I wish we had more stories of their friendship together so that maybe I could understand what made them such great friends.

I just really can not fathom all the glowing reviews. I found it so unbelievably boring that I wanted one ofVerity's captors to shoot her in the head so that it would be over and I didn't have to keep reading it. This felt way too young for me and nowhere near adult.

1/5 Stars

I could not recommend this to anyone, unless they are hoping to die of boredom. Much too young and not enough adult in there anywhere. As I was reading this I felt like Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer: 

Please someone, anyone tell me you didn't enjoy it either! I need to know I'm not the only one!