do you worry that you have too many FEELINGS inside of you? feelings about GIRLS? do you wish you could just CRY THESE FEELINGS OUT?
do you enjoy any of these things?
- intrepid girl heroes
- spy intrigues
- unreliable narrators
- flying
- stories entirely wholly 100% about girls loving girls
- crying about it
WOW, YOU SHOULD READ CODE NAME VERITY
it is told by a wwii scottish spy lady who, captured by the gestapo, agrees to write out a confession. WHOOPS, THE CONFESSION IS ALL ABOUT HOW MUCH SHE LOVES A LADY FIGHTER PILOT. i don’t want to say anything else because there are some REVELATIONS AND TWISTS AND SUCH, so trust me, THE PLOT IS GOOD, THIS BOOK IS SMART, THIS BOOK IS BEAUTIFUL
it’s also about how there’s no wrong way to be a girl— one tromps around in boots fixing cars & the other is a exquisitely manicured sassy flirt, and they are both our hero
here are some other things this book is about: all of your tears, like literally 100% of your tears, girls kissing in wartime, being afraid, the things we do for love (of other girls), girls being unimaginably flawless, oh no you’re crying again, stop crying, this is embarrassing
(note on diversity: both protagonists are white and cis. and like, their love is not explicitly queer, but if one were interested in reading it as such, there would be nothing more easy in all the world. there are no romances besides theirs, and when they meet it is “like falling in love,” so whether you wish to read theirs as a deeply romantic anne/diana friendship or as a queer romance that lacks the vocabulary of queerness is up to you, dear reader)
tw: torture, threats of sexual assault, wartime violence
Finally read this after loading it on my phone months ago. It really is fantastic and worth a read if you want just a really great set of characters written well And it has this surprisingly intricate and complex interwoven plot (I’ve actually gone back several times to reread parts with fresh knowledge and a different perspective). As you start, you’re thrown into a situation that only unfolds through memory and there’s this chain of anxiety that just wraps around you and slowly winds tighter the farther you read. But as much as the circumstances and some of the details are terrible, there’s still this humor and wit that shines through.
And all these little things that make your stomach twist. The guilty sympathy of the soldiers involved in her undercover training. The German officer’s beautiful tenor. Omg, Georgia Penn, Marie, Engel, Maman, Mitraillette, and La Cadette. Amazing women characters abound. But the crying OP mentioned? Yeahhhh. A bit of that.