Rose Under Fire

This isn't nearly as heart wrenching as Code Name Verity, but I did cry a few times. I feel like I need to reread both books to get how inter-woven they are. (I didn't even remember one character in this from CNV until I read one of the reviews here and it made me go “Oh! Right!”.) Elizabeth Wein really knows how to tell a story.

After Code Name Verity's deftly plotted tale, I expected more from Elizabeth Wein. The tale of a young American woman who gets a job piloting for Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary and ends up captured by the Nazis, enjoying thier hospitality at Ravensbruck, comes across as preachy and nothing more than a vehicle for the retelling of Nazi atrocities.

A very powerful book. 4.5 stars rounded up.
The main characters are fictional, but most of the places and events depicted are/were real.
A good part of the book is set in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. It was a terrible place. Roughly 150,000 women passed through it. Some survived. You could always depend on the Nazis to be even more horrible than most can imagine.

I loved Code Name Verity. I adored Rose Under Fire.

While both books are strongly stories of friendship, I feel that the situations Rose finds herself in makes for several different, unique, and strong relationships. Simply put, this book is found family at its finest.

Reading was emotional, even the moments we know are inevitable. The writing itself, I feel, surpasses Verity. There is so much depth and personality to the supporting characters that they end up taking center stage. Knowing that the things Rose experiences and what her friends have gone through are based on true events makes the pages even more riveting.

It seems as though a majority of the fictional WWII era books are forbidden romances or on the front lines of battle. It's so refreshing to see one purely about love in the rawest sense of the word. Not romance. A realistic picture of hope and justice is also painted. All in all, Rose Under Fire is a beautiful tribute to the real life ‘Rabbits'.

“Tell the world.”

According to GoodReads, I started reading this in May and got 20% through it, which is the point where I realized it was a concentration camp story and I had to put it on hold until I felt emotionally prepared to read it. I guess I decided that this weekend I was prepared to finish it, though this pile of used Kleenexes begs to differ.

When Code Name Verity first started getting buzz, I admit I thought, “Do we really need another WWII story? What's left to tell?” Then, of course, it was a fresh and brilliant novel and I loved it and so did basically everyone.

Same with Rose Under Fire–did we really need another concentration camp story? Well–maybe we needed this one.

Wein's frame is smart, having Rose narrate her story after the fact. I haven't seen as many WWII novels deal with a character's trauma like this. So many books focus on how horrible being in a camp was--which, yes, it was--but less time is spent on how horrible being out of the camp was, too. Too, setting it in Ravensbruck, focusing on the Rabbits (who were medically experimented on)--all of this is a different take on the standard WWII narrative and important history. And including the Nuremburg trials, and how survivors might respond, and how gendered everything was, and, and, and...! It's all so richly nuanced and powerful, without ever feeling didactic. Unsurprisingly from the author of Code Name Verity, the friendships--sisterhood--between the prisoners is so beautiful and important and moving.

I saw some reactions that were disappointed that this didn't have the same suspense/twists as Code Name Verity, but I... mean, I wouldn't want to read the same story twice, I guess, and I'm not sure how that kind of narrative would play out in this story.

Oh, also, as a longtime Girl Scout, I was VERY moved by reading all of Rose's Girl Scout songs and traditions and realizing how many had survived to present day. Such a powerfully humanizing and relatable element–I am sure many other present day Girl Scouts would respond similarly.